This particular model or a USB TV tuner in general? There are several things to keep in mind that I've run into when trying these things out both on a laptop and desktop. 1) Make sure that if it requires USB 2.0 that your laptop has a USB 2.0 port. I learned this the hard way where my laptop did not have a USB 2.0 port but the tuner required one. USB 1.1 is not fast enough to support TV tuners in general. 2) If you are in the U.S. and you don't buy an HDTV or SDTV tuner, you are wasting your money. NTSC is being turned off in February of 2009 so make sure any tuner you are looking at is ATSC. 3) Make sure you have MORE than the required memory the unit calls for. I just bought a new ATSC tuner that has a minimum memory requirement of 512MB RAM. Great, that's what I have... well it works but JUST barely. It's practically useless because of all the other things I have running that eat up the memory the tv tuner wants to use.