Review: Belkin OmniView Soho 4 port KVM

What's got more ports than you can shake a stick at and is damned useful if you've got up to four computers but only one monitor? David Dorn reveals all.

Product	OmniView Soho 4 port KVM
Company	Belkin
Web	www.belkin.co.uk
Price	£139 (inc vat)
We like	Style, ease of use
We don't like	Nothing
Rating	9/10
Requirements

People keep telling me I'm strange. I rarely contradict them, because, I suppose, they're right. Here am I a single bloke in front of a large (21 inch) Taxan monitor, and, like most folks, I have a preference for a particular keyboard and mouse. Strangely, there are now three PCs in various stages of undress littered atop and beneath my desk (I hesitate to call it a workstation, and I can't call it a Playstation, so let's just stick at Desk, eh?). At one time or another, you might have walked into my office to see a large, denim-clad posterior staring up at you from the bowels of the desk while I tried to swap leads about, in order to switch over between PCs.

Frankly, it would have done my back a lot more good to have gone out and bough two more 21" monitors and another two keyboards and mice. What my Bank Manager would have said, though, is an entirely different proposition.

Which is why I was ever so pleased when Belkin's OmniView 4-Port KVM Switch with Audio and USB arrived at the office.

It's a bit of a clever unit, allowing you to use just the one keyboard (the "K"), mouse (the "M") and Monitor (the "V" - for video) with up to four PC base units. Futuristic in design - all curvy and charcoal-silver in looks - it's actually quite simple to set up. Whether you've got a PS/2 mouse or a USB one makes no difference - you plu that in, the keyboard likewise, and you take a lead from the unit to your monitor.

Thereafter, you connect each PC to the box in a similar manner - mouse to mouse (no matter what sort) keyboard to keyboard and monitor to monitor. For this purpose, of course, you need extension leads, none of which are supplied. Belkin does do a range of leads especially for the purpose, which I'd have thought could have been included with the KVM switch itself, or at least two of them, if not the full complement.

You also do the same with the speaker and mic leads to and from sound cards, to complete your setup.

Thereafter, you've got four buttons at the front of the unit, with which to choose which base unit you want to use. Alternatively - and without loading any more software - you can hit "scroll lock" twice in rapid succession, and then a number from 1 to 4 on your keypad to switch between units. Cool!

In use

Wiring the whole thing up took a little time, it has to be said - once you've got the master leads in, the next ones are a tad narrowly spaced, but, like everything else, patience pays off, and everything does fit, albeit snugly, into the space allotted.

Switching from unit to unit is a doddle - I find myself making more use of the front panel switches more than the software alternative, but that's because the switch sits neatly beside my monitor, just forward of the keyboard.

A major plus, for me, is that the KVM handles the kind of stupidly huge resolutions I tend to use, whereas KVMs I've tried in the past just couldn't take the video signal sensibly at anything more than 800x600. Call me a snob, but I'm not going to throttle my system back to that when I've got 1600x1200 on tap, and 1920x1440 just waiting to be chanced!

There's a slight delay - almost imperceptible, you might say, when you switch from one PC to another, while the mouse gets its bearings - a little waggle of the right wrist, and all is fine.

Verdict

I hope Belkin don't think they're getting this unit back, because they're not. It's become very useful, very quickly, and it's made my life much easier. I can now run programs that take hours to complete their allotted tasks on one or two PCs (rendering video is hours and hours of endless... fun) while I get on with something less time-hungry on another machine, and I don't have to constantly get used to different keyboard feels, or have a rat's nest of wires and leads cluttering my desk up. It's really cool to have one PC monitoring emails, another rendering video, another doing something in the hard disk recording line - and I can set each up optimally for the main task it will have.

In truth, a KVM switch is a Godsend for the likes of me - and if you have more than one base unit, and need to preserve some sense of sanity in terms of monitors and keyboards, then you'll find one very useful too.

In those terms, like I said, the Belkin unit is well worthy of your further research, and even parting with golden beer tokens for. £139 might seem a lot, but it's a whole lot cheaper than the alternative.

 

Dave Dorn