Question about KVM's

Published on August 22, 2005 By Island Dog In Personal Computing

My wife is thinking about letting me get a Mac Mini. I mean I'm going to buy a Mac Mini soon.

I have a Viewsonic LCD which I have connected to my desktop with a dvi cable. I have been looking at a lot of KVM's and I notice most don't have dvi connections, and the one's that do are very expensive. I have never had a KVM before, so I'm looking for suggestions or advice.

Comments

MarkMcQ

on Aug 22, 2005

One thing to watch out for, if you plan on having the PC and Mac both hooked up to the KVM, is that sometimes Macs tend to ignore certain KVM's, and think that there's no monitor attatched. I think you might have to do a bit of checking before purchase to make sure it will work ok.

Phoon

on Aug 22, 2005

Check out the reviews at Toms Harware.
http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20050715/

I have an Aten KVM over IP at work (std vga) that is just great. Be prepared to part with some fair cash though...

Island Dog

on Aug 23, 2005

I don't want to pay a lot. Also, I want to keep using my dvi on my desktop. Thanks for the responses.

iTZKooPA

on Aug 23, 2005

Does your monitor have both a DVI and VGA connection by any chance? Lots of them do so if you aren't sure I would certainly take a look first, otherwise you will pay through the nose for a good DVI KVM as you have already figured out.

Or get an adapter...

Island Dog

on Aug 23, 2005

Yes it has both connections. I was also wondering if I buy a separate keyboard/mouse for the Mac Mini, could I just hook the mini up through the vga connection. I obviously woudln't be using both computers at the same time.

Phoon

on Aug 24, 2005

if I buy a separate keyboard/mouse for the Mac Mini, could I just hook the mini up through the vga connection

Yes. I have a manual KVM (click-click). The main purpose is to utilize my 2nd monitor on 2 PCs. Keyboard is shared but mouse is not. So you can use the KVM to just utilize the monitor and have a separate KB and Mouse connected directly to the devices.

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