With a retail price of $225 CDN ($117 US) the JustCom JC-M104U is certainly not cheap but
when you factor in that the package comes with all the cables you'll ever need,
the price doesn't seem that high anymore. And having all the mouse, audio and
USB cables integrated into one means that cable management is also a lot cleaner.
The Justcom JC-M104U 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.
During
testing the JC-M104U 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-M104U 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.
Normal consumers going about their daily office
work on multiple machines need not worry though. Higher mouse refresh
rates are usually only the concern of optical mouse wielding
gamers.
Conclusions:
While I don't 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-M104U come in.
With a retail price of $225 CDN ($117 US) the JC-M104U 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.
In term of
cable management, the all-in-oneJustcom KVM cables
certainly make things easier to connect because they integrate the USB/monitor
and audio 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-M104U 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 nice little USB KVM from
Justcom!
Related
Articles
Here are a few other articles that you might enjoy
as well...
1. Belkin OmniView 4-port KVM/audio/USB/PS2 Switch
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