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45 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent, September 29, 2003
The two complaints most often leveled against KVMs are: (1) video degradation, and (2) hardware incompatibility. I have not encountered either in using the Belkin F1DJ102PB for the past month.I am running 2 Dells, one with W98 and the other XP-Home, through the Belkin to an Optiquest/Viewsonic Q95 monitor at 1152x864 and 85hz. The keyboard is a vanilla Dell keyboard and the mouse is a Microsoft Wheelmouse Optical. There have been zero problems. I work with Excel spreadsheets all day long, staring at endless rows and columns of small font numbers. This makes me VERY fussy about video issues like ghosting, fuzziness and blurring. I can detect absolutely NO difference in video quality when using the KVM as opposed to running straight from PC to monitor. The switch's maximum video bandwidth is 200Mhz. If you are using very high screen resolutions with high refresh rates (say something higher than 1600x1200x100hz=192Mhz), this could become an issue. The mouse worked immediately on the Dell on which is was originally installed and, once I installed its drivers on the other machine (a step that I think many forget - and then complain about hardware problems), it worked fine there as well. The unit itself is small and has cable connectors on all 4 sides. Once everything is connected, this arrangement can be somewhat ungainly - a big electronic spider. I have placed mine on the floor underneath my desk. This means I must use the keyboard shortcut to change between machines rather than the button on the switch itself, but I think I would do that anyway - its so easy. Hit the ScrollLock key twice and then either the up or down arrow key (BUT - only the arrow keys in the cursor keypad - not the ones under the '8' and the '2'). Every time you change from one machine to the other, the KVM emits a little chirp. I would like to strangle that little chirp, but this is my only complaint about the unit. It is an inexpensive (especially when you consider that Belkin has included the cables) but entirely satisfactory piece of equipment. Highly recommended.
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