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With a KVM I can greatly increase my efficiency, after all what else can I do if I'm reinstalling on one machine and only have one keyboard, mouse and monitor??
89% Rating:
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Justcom JC-104P |
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All-in-one Cables
Because this KVM uses
all-in-one KVM cables which have the PS/2 and Video signal integrated into one
wire, standard cables you might buy at the store just won't work. The necessary
cables to run the JC-104P are included in the price of the unit, and come in
pairs of two different lengths of four and six feet.
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The Justcom JC104P uses all-in-one KVM cables that integrate the PS/2 and 15-pin analog video signal in one. Over the short distances we tested, the image quality remained very good, in spite of the assumption that integrating the cables might cause interference in the video signal. |
If you have four computers hooked up, it's much easier to manage four cables
instead of twelve!
The
Justcom JC-104P supports auto scan so if you want to
monitor more then one computer simultaneously just enable the auto scan feature
and you'll know when something is idle or crashes.
There are a few quirks with the JC-104P however. I
would have expected to see all the ports on the rear of the KVM switch,
having the main keyboard/mouse PS/2 connectors on the front of the unit can
make cable management messy. Buttons two and three also sometimes get stuck
under the top piece of plastic making changing computers tricky.
During testing the JC-104P worked quite well, switching PC's was very easy and we did not encounter
any problems other then the buttons sticking. I would have liked to see the
JC-104P support a higher mouse refresh rate than 60 Hz. Even the program "PS/2
Rate" doesn't help. If you are accustomed to running a mouse at 100Hz it can be a bit
frustrating at times.
Image quality through the JC-104P was excellent up
to 1600x1200 @ 85 Hz (max the monitor would do) and the text and pictures were
just as sharp as if the monitor was directly hooked up to the PC. Often, KVM's
will introduce ghosting in the images if the cables are not shielded properly,
and thankful this wasn't the case with the JC-104P.
Conclusions:
While I do not mind fixing computers for my
friends/family, it's not something that I particularly enjoy doing. Most of the
time the problems are software related which require me to reconfigure or
reinstall the offending software which can take quite a bit of time. Having a
KVM certainly saves me that precious fragging time as I can now do multiple jobs
at once.
For the enthusiast out there, KVM's are also very
useful as many have a main stable machine and one for toying around with the
latest hardware. Sometimes restrictions do not allow for two, three or four
monitors, keyboard and mice and that's where the Justcom JC-104P come in.
With a retail price of $155 CDN ($110 US)
the JC-104P is priced competitively, and when you factor in the price
of four KVM cables (two four foot and two six foot) all of a sudden it doesn't
seem like all that much money.
Justcom
should tweak their JC-104P design a bit and perhaps move the main keyboard and
mouse ports to the back. It's a cosmetic issue, but I much rather placing
the KVM on top of a monitor, or beside one, without creating a mess of
wires. In term of cable management, the all-in-one KVM cables certainly make things easier to
connect because they integrate the keyboard, video and mouse cables into one. It remains to be seen
how the all-in-one cables will handle longer distances, but for the
lengths we tested all seemed visually well.
Using and
setting up the Justcom JC-104P was a breeze, you won't even need to refer to the
users manual to do that. If you're tired of swapping out cables
every time you want to use another PC, perhaps it's time for you to pick up
a KVM. Trust me here on this one, spend a bit more on a quality KVM
and you won't have any headaches (poor image quality and refresh rates can get to you after a while). Cheap
out and buy one of those $20 generic KVMs and I guarantee you'll have a harder
time than with this KVM from Justcom.
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