Home > Consumer Reviews > Belkin Omniview E Series 4-Port KVM Switch, PS/2

I recently bought one of these 4-port Belkin KVMs as I had expanded my home office to three PCs with a fourth on the way. I thought this would be a good way to avoid all those extra keyboards, mice and monitors. I had been using a 2-port KVM of a different make which switched instantly and reliably between PCs with a double press of Scroll-Lock.

The Belkin is a chunky box which sits on your desktop, within reach. It has front connections for keyboard and mouse, and rear connections for the monitor and 3 connections (keyboard, monitor, mouse) for each of 4 PCs. It's a PS/2-only device with no USB connectivity (although my USB mouse seems to work well enough through a USB-to-PS/2 adapter).

Installation of the Belkin was simplicity itself. Just plug in all the cables to the clear, colour-coded sockets and away you go. No power supply is necessary for a single KVM. Switching between PCs is achieved by pressing the button on the KVM to cycle to the next PC or by hitting Scroll-Lock twice follwed by a digit (1 to 4)for which PC you want to use.

At first it seemed to work OK but over the next few hours and days, some annoying features emerged:

1. The beep! It can't be turned off and it sounds an unpleasant high-pitched blip every time you press the KVM's button and twice if you use the hotkey sequence. In a home office it's intrusive but in a shared office it would quickly annoy the heck out of your co-workers.

2. The mouse pointer freezes for 2 to 3 seconds after switching, before you can move it again. Not a great length of time but it reduces my productivity and increases my frustration. My previous KVM didn't have to do this, so why does the Belkin? Its manual bleats about having to re-acquire mouse co-ordination or something equally vague and unsatisfying.

3. It often ignores the hotkey sequence on the first attempt. Maybe this is why Belkin added that bleedin' beep to tell you that it had (not) seen Scroll-Lock twice. But by the time you realise that you didn't hear the beep, your fingers have moved on and pressed a digit key, which probably then ends up typed into whatever document you have open. Several of my documents have ended up with an errant "1" or "2" hidden away in them ...

4. Sometimes after switching, it changes the state of the F-Lock and Caps-Lock. Given that F-Lock is necessary for the hotkey sequence to work, turning it off sneakily seems rather underhand! On my keyboard at least (which is, however, a standard and genuine Microsoft keyboard) the Caps-Lock light is often lit up after a switch. Capital letters themselves aren't on and it takes 2 presses of Caps-Lock to turn the light off. Why?

5. Sometimes after switching, a PC "loses" the mouse or keyboard. You can recover keyboard loss by unplugging and re-plugging the keyboard, but since there is no mouse recovery feature as on other KVMs, mouse loss can only be recovered by rebooting the affected PC. This is perhaps the most aggravating thing of all as it can be a real productivity-killer and always seems to happen at the worst possible moment.

6. After switching, the KVM seems to issue a mouse-button event to the attached PC. This is sometimes a "back" click on my 5-button mouse and sometimes a roll of the mouse wheel. Again, this may be only my mouse, but it's another standard, genuine and ubiquitous Microsoft Intellimouse product. In practice, it can change the page you are viewing to the previous one or effect a scroll if that's what your mouse's wheel does. This is the second time I have typed this whole review as I switched to another PC after typing the first draft, and the KVM did a back-button click as I returned here, going to the previous page and destroying my words! Grrrrrr!

7. When pressing the button on the KVM to cycle through the PCs, it will happily switch to unused ports. Many KVMs ignore unused ports to avoid having to cycle through them to get back to a working one. The Belkin insists on visiting all 4 ports in turn and even introduces a 2 second delay before you can move on to one that works.

These faults add up to a device which should be simple and transparent to live with, but which is most definitely not. I have now ordered a different make of KVM after carefully studying its online manual.

Anyone want to buy a little-used Belkin before it goes in the bin? ;-)

This KVM does not work with the scroll wheel on a mouse. Because of the way it handles the changeover from one PC to another, the advanced settings of the mouse are ignored and the mouse is switched back into standard mode - ie: no scrolling.

I regret buying it.

The Belkin 4 port KVM (keyboard, video and mouse) switch range solves theproblem of finding space for a heap of monitors (not to mention keyboardsand mice) when you've got more than one computer to control.
The 4 portmodel is small, light and doesn't need an external power supply (it usesthe keyboard and mouse supplies from the computers). Despite it's lack ofweight, it's well enough designed not to get pulled around by the cables(13 of them) connected at its rear. It works well up to at least1280x1024 definition (my monitor lost interest above that!) on linux andvarious species of Windows.
One niggle - every time you press theselector button, or use the keyboard shortcut codes, the unit emits arather annoying beep. They should have put an off switch on that!

What isn't clear from any of the information is that this product is supplied without cables. One or two of the reviews I've read suggest it's usable straight out of the box, but disappointingly - it isn't.
This means that you have to fork out £10 each for four cables, which would double the price I paid for this. And as it was purchased for work on expenses, I now have to get approval for more expenditure or waste time returning it. Not impressed! On the plus side, I have used one of these before and found it a great space saving device and thoroughly reliable. Belkin take note - include the cables in future and price the package accordingly!

Switch very helpful if you use more than one machine - you can plug in up to 4 machines into it. Useful especially if you have limited space. It is very neat little tool and Switch is very easy to use and go between machines. Recomment highly!