KVM

[david at thekramers.net (David Kramer)]

On Tue, 11 Dec 2001, Randall Hofland wrote:

> My apologies- I forgot to put in the subject so I suspect most did not even read
> the note. Question: Is the Tripp-lite brand a good one for KVM switches and
> is this model a good choice?

I don't know about Tripp-Lite (though I like other products by them).  I
can give negative feedback on Belkin OmniView though.

- It beeps very loudly when changing computers.
- The buttons on the unit let you go to the next computer but not prev.
- The keystroke to change computers is complicated (ScrollLock twice
  then up or down, but reversed- up goes to prev, down goes to next)

But the really annoying thing that makes me want to replace it is that the
up/down arrow keystroke to switch computers *gets past to the current
computer*!  So if computer 2 is the current and is at a command prompt,
when I switch to computer 1 by pressing ScrollLock-ScrollLock-UpArrow,
before the OmniView switches it will send the UpArrow to computer 2.  When
I come back to computer 2, the prompt would have recalled the last command
(because of the UpArrow).  If I hit enter by accident, I can end up
executing a command I didn't want to.  That has happened to me a few
times.

At my last job, we used Black Box, and they were great, except they failed
a little more often than they should.