[geeks] Gefen DVI switcher, was Re: KVM revisited

[Rick Hamell]

On 10/4/07 6:17 PM, "Charles Shannon Hendrix" <shannon at widomaker.com> wrote:

> Tue, 02 Oct 2007 @ 22:59 -0700, Nadine said:
> 
>> What about throwing a powered USB hub in there between the mobo and
>> the KVM?  This might get around the issue (which sounds like it may
>> be power-related).
> 
> What I ended up doing is getting a Gefen DVI switcher.
> 
> They seem to make decent products, and unlike most of the others, their
> DVI switchers *DO* support EDID and the other video data standards, and
> they work at 1900x1200.
> 
> Also, in case anyone needs to know: Gefen also makes a lot of units for
> Mac use, including switching multiple dual-link DVI monitors and that
> sort of thing.
> 
> The price really wasn't that much more than IOGear and the others.
> 
> Anyway, we'll see how it works out.  I'll post a review when I get it up
> and running.

We use Gefen at work, and I'm honestly not that impressed with them. I've
got about a 30% failure rate on the 2x2 DVI switches. And I've had two out
of ten DVI Detectives be defective out of the box.

I have one issue where a KVM took nearly a minute to switch the USB over,
but only when going to the Windows machine. It took 10 seconds to switch
over to the Linux machine. Yet the KVM works perfectly when connected to
anything other then a Windows box. The worse part - is that other then
drivers, the boxes are the exact same hardware.

That being said, their customer service and return policies are pretty good.
I'm just worried about them when the warranty is gone and I have switches
going bad left and right.

Rick