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

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.

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.

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.

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