Tom's Hardware KVM Roundup

nexex writes: "Tom's Hardware has a new article with a review of several KVM switches. I have considering buying a KVM switch as I seem to collect/use more & more computers, I feel left with little choice :) While I have several friends who have taken the plunge, they have all spent wildly different amounts on them. Granted price plays a great factor on the features you get, but how do you know which one is not going to end up letting you down? If you end up with el cheapo, you will most certainly end up regretting it, as this device will be carrying the signals of your primary input and output to your systems."

Comments

Get VNC

[jackb_guppy]

If have nine machines - I have 1 spare monitor and keyboard for base boot and load. Once loaded VNC all the way - even with linux.

Nice to be able to use any machine any where in the house with touching it.

Re:Get VNC

[MikeFM]

My experience with those switches has all been bad. We had them in an apartment I usda have and they were a pain. And I've had more expensive versions at several jobs and all were also pains. I'd honestly rather just just network to the other machines and run apps remotely. I do keep an extra monitor etc around in case I need to install some hardware on another computer.

Too much $$.

[TheSHAD0W]

Here's a less expensive solution.

It can't do everything (it irks me that I can't log onto my 2K box through it), but it also doesn't limit you to a few feet away.

Re:Too much $$.

[snake_dad]

Have you tried tight VNC??

IOGear and USB support

[Osty]

I've been using the IOGear 2-port KVM switch reviewed in the article for several months now, and I have to say I love it. I use it to share between XP and Linux, and neither machine has ever had a problem with the USB devices. I did run into a slight problem with the video causing snow and jitters in X11 (no problems at all in XP), but adjusting the modeline (dumped via xvidtune, changed the polarity of the hsync) made the problems disappear. For anybody who wants to get away from PS/2 systems, or uses Macs, I really do recommend IOGear.

The only thing I could wish for is the OSD/hotkey support of IOGear's 4-port model, but I can live without that. Also, Tom's price was a bit high. I bought mine for roughly $100 at a local computer store.

I used one of these

[vsync64]

At my previous employer I had one of these to switch between my laptop (Sony Vaio Z505, mmm) and my tower (HP Kayak, bleh). I'm almost positive it was the GCS124U, but it didn't have the OSD stuff they mentioned in the review. I remember that the one thing which annoyed me about the KVM was that there was no way to jump past the 2 empty slots, and there wasn't any way to switch via a keystroke or anything but the Big Button. Then again, I was running Slackware, so maybe it required some sort of special software. Other than that, it was a really solid unit, and I highly recommend it.

You can see my setup right before they laid us all off. And of course they kept the KVM and the shiny laptop... :(

Inova

[NoInfo]

The guys at Inova have a KVM switch not reviewed in this article. In addition, they claim that it doesn't just switch the KeyboardVideoMouse, but all your silly devices. There's a small, pleased review of it here.

Apex

[Scrag]

I use 8-port Apex KVM switches at work, and they have some nice features; they also have a few flaws. These KVM switches arent the cheap ones found in this review, but if your looking for higher end equipment I might be able to give some useful nformation.

The switches are only KVM, no sound, no USB. To change screens, you press the print screen key. It brings up a menu, and you can choose between any of your machines. The machines can all be named, so you know exactly what machine you are going to. Another nice feature is that you can chain them together for more than just 8 machines on the switch. My only real complaint is that sometimes the menu doesnt get erased when you switch machines, so you have to bring it up again and get rid of it. I havent had any problems with screen resolutions, keyboards or mice. Definitely worth looking into for a setup with more machines than two.

Audio switching

[Chris Pimlott]

I'm surprised Tom is so exciting about audio switching. Most decent speaker setups will take more than 1 input signal, so you can have both (or more) boxes hooked up to the same speaker at once all the time. It's nice to be able to play a CD or something from my other box while I'm using the first's drive.

From the CmdrTaco school of proofreading

[Scooby Snacks]

From the data box on the Jargy:

Cost: $??? MSRP

Then a bit later:

...Jargy is an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) operating only in the Asian market. Jargy does not sell this unit directly to the public...

Then at the end:

For the price, it is a good product.

Hmm... that's interesting. :)

PS: What's a formkey? I finally got one of those weird formkey errors that I've been hearing people talk about.

Success Varies

[ZxCv]

I had a Belkin 2-port for a long time that worked nearly flawlessly. The only problem I ever had with it was switching away from an X session and then going back would cause the mouse to go haywire to the point of needing to restart X. Not sure if this was the fault of X or the KVM switch, but either way it was annoying. :-)

A few months back I was looking through uBid.com and found a 4-port KVM that had plenty of features (more than the Belkin, at least) and even included 2 free cable sets. I had never heard of the brand (Genie), but I figured at only $100, it was worth a shot to get all my machines hooked up to the KVM and thus ditch an extra monitor. And luckily enough, it has performed flawlessly. It still irks me to remember how much I paid for the original 2 port Belkin (almost $300 a couple years ago) now that this "cheapo" one is working so well, but its also good to see the good features and stability of the higher end KVMs coming to the lower end of the price range.

Exploit the monitor's A/B switch?

[crucini]

Background: Good KVM's are expensive. Cheap KVM's are awful. Many monitors now have a built-in high quality A/B switch. Many KVM users spend 95% of time on a workstation, and occasionally have to flip to a "headless" box to make a BIOS change or something.

Why not buy a cheap KVM, attach a cheap keyboard to it, and plug it into input B on the monitor? Then most of the time you have high quality video from the workstation to input A. When using the KVM, you probably don't care about quality. Of course, there is the danger of typing on the wrong keyboard.

Personally, I just use the monitor A/B both at home and at work. The B cable goes on whatever box I'm fixing/setting up at the moment. Once the box has networking, there is no need for KVM.

Why no networked KVM?

[JoeShmoe]

Before you yell out VNC, follow me...

Wouldn't it be nice if you had a box you could tack onto your existing system to pump the basic IO over your existing CAT-5 wiring? My ideal unit would have the following

Input jumper for power switch control
Input jumper for reset button control
Light sensor for power light
Light sensor for HDD light
Light sensor for Link light
Light sensor for Act light
Serial PS/2 port for keyboard
Serial PS/2 port for mouse
15-pin RGB port for monitor

Here's how it would work. You mount the box on the back of your server unit and connect your power and reset buttons to the unit and connect the unit to the reset/power jumpers on the motherboard. You stick the light sensors near the respective LEDs. You wire up the KVM to the unit and optionally plug the local devices into the unit.

Now, the unit is a little linux box that takes the input and sends it over the network (now we're using VNC) to my remote session. The bonus is that I can still see the unit if it's crashed (the VNC service or the whole dang box). I can boot into the BIOS and make changes. I can run utilites and so on from DOS sessions. Plus, I can click a button and reset the box, or power it down. If I connect to the session and see no image, I can see if the power light is on or if there is any hard drive/network activity.

I can think of about a billion times in my techie lifespan that I've wished for such a device. Yes, I know there devices you can use to remotely power off a computer. Yes, I know I could setup a webcam to monitor some lights. Yes, I know VNC gets me most of the way there.

But it's not cost effective to buy one of these for each server. I would rather have one box that could control 4/8/16 boxes. It's just a standard KVM with some extra inputs attached to its own dedicated Linux box!

So please, Linksys, Belkin...whoever...can't someone please build this, or show me a link to something like this?

- JoeShmoe

Re:Why no networked KVM?

[JoeShmoe]

Oh, and for bonus points...how about another connect to allow this network KVM to function as a floppy boot device? IE, I would transfer a floppy image (say a BIOS update or a Ghost boot disk) to the KVM from my workstation, reboot and have the remote system boot to the "Floppy" on the KVM. Then I "eject" the floppy and reboot into the normal mode.

I forgot that floppy swapping is another big reason I've had to make wasteful trips to the server room, which I would like to eliminate.

- JoeShmoe

What about picture quality?

[Hank the Lion]

In the article, Tom has concentrated on go/no-go tests.
In a product that can influence picture quality tremendously, I would have liked to see something more than "It ... produced a good picture " (with no mention of the resolution tested) in case of the CS-USB21H , or no mention of picture quality at all in case of the GCS124U KVM .
It would have been really helpful to see characteristics like 'amount of reflections' or 'actual measured bandwidth'
This would have helped me more on deciding which unit is right for my purposes than describing the computer systems that were used in detail. What is the use of specifying the brand of CD-writer or the amount and brand of RAM that were used? I cannot imagine that these have any influence on the performance of the KVM switch.

Re:Belkins are good

[iCEBaLM]

Only negative I've found is that I need to have the Win2k box selected while it boots, otherwise the wheel mouse isn't detected... the rest of the mouse works, just not the wheel.

Control Panel -> Mouse -> Hardware -> Properties -> Advanced Settings

Change "Wheel Detection" to "Assume wheel is present".

-- iCEBaLM