Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

As I'm doing a lot of writing about Windows Vista at the moment, I've finally got round to hooking my 64-bit Athlon Vista box up to my dual monitor rig. My old KVM wasn't able to handle a dual-head set-up, so I did a little research and ended up purchasing a shiny new Belkin dual-head capable OmniView Soho 2-port KVM. Unfortunately I didn't do my research well enough, and failed to spot that Belkin have a completely new set of cabling for USB-enabled KVMs, so I had to wait a few days while a new set of cabling arrived.

Ten minutes of crawling under my desk untangling cables and adding the new Belkin cables (they also do sound and additional USB devices) and things were ready to go. Press a button and I'm on a different machine, press another and it's back again. I don't even need to reach down to the KVM - it'll recognise certain key combinations as instructions to switch machines.

(One thing to note - the KVM is unable to cope with multiplexed USB devices, so I can use either the mouse from my Wireless Laser Desktop 6000 or the keyboard - not both. I think I might be able to hack it with two wireless USB dongles, but that's experimentation for another day.)

Expect to see the old four port KVM and some coaxial VGA cables on eBay soon!