[ale] KVMs - good one.

[Neal Rhodes]

A while back I posted a question on KVMs for use with a mixture of linux
and Win7 computers. 

To report back, after the various bits of research and advice I bought a
StarTech 4 port USB KVM.  

Thus far, very satisfied with it.   The whole schmutz (with 4 cable
sets)  was around $100.  You can get cable sets individually with
whatever length you want, which is good for me, because I need one short
cable set, one 6' cable set, one 15' cable set. 

The unit has 4 select buttons on it, which positively pick which CPU
it's connected to.   As opposed to some magic keystroke sequence which
doesn't always work. 

I had to toss my beloved PS2 keyboard and trackman, and bought a
Logitech cordless trackball and USB keyboard.  The Logitech dongle plugs
into the Startech KVM.

It's been several months now, and the important thing is it's never
failed, hung, become unresponsive, failed to switch, etc, like the cheap
Belkin and IOGear switches.  The switching between Fedora Core 10, and
Centos 6.x has been flawless.  Never failed to "just work".    Switching
to the Win7 notebook has generally been fine; a couple of times it has
failed when I switched and the notebook was asleep.   Always corrected
on reboot.   And you have to switch to the Win7 notebook before you plug
in the VGA to the notebook; otherwise it doesn't correctly figure out
the monitor resolution.   Minor. 

The major annoyance I had with the other KVMs, where the unit would
hang, and I had to disconnect every last computer in order for it to
lose power and reset has never happened. 

Neal Rhodes
MNOP Ltd
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