So here’s the deal. I was trying to get a Wii for myself for Christmas, but I got tired of calling all over the place and being told, "We sold our last one last week/yesterday/earlier this morning/500 milliseconds ago. Instead, I got an Xbox 360, which I had been thinking about for a while. (I’ll probably get a Wii later anyway, heh.) I don’t have an HDTV and don’t plan on getting one anytime soon, but I do have a nice flatscreen monitor for my computer. What I want to do is get a switch that also has audio, so I can share my monitor and speakers between my computer and 360. I figured I could find a decent one for around 30 bucks.
Yeah right. I can get one for 30 that doesn’t have audio and looks kinda sketchy, one that does have audio and looks really sketchy, one for 50 or 60 with audio but still with the sketchification, or various others that seem reliable but cost some totally stupid amount of money.
Why is this shit so expensive? It’s just a bunch of fucking wires, maybe with a 50 cent IC chip to recognize a couple of keyboard commands for switching. For now I can make do with switching the cables out manually.
I think they’re still expensive due to a couple of things. One is relatively small demand, which keeps the market small and encourages the makers to maximize profit. The other is that they’re a computer peripheral, and those are where most of the margin is in the computers biz.
I use this one. It’s an actual hardware switch, not a software one, so it (a) allows me to use a mouse with more than two buttons, (b) allows me to use a keyboard with more than 103 keys and (c) would actually swap between a PC and a non-PC source. Most of the cheap ones rely on recognizing a keyboard input, such as hitting the scroll lock key twice. If you’re not using a keyboard, you’re SOL.
So, if you’re willing to spend the money, make sure you get a hardware, not a software switch. I had two return two “defective” ones before I finally figured out why my mouse wouldn’t work properly and got a hardware switch.
Yet again I get to shill for www.monoprice.com I love these guys, whenever someone says “why is [random wire stuff] expensive?”, monoprice has a cheap version. I got my eye on YOU MonsterCable, with the $100 digital cables.
They have a bunch of cheap KVM switches, I don’t know if any of them are exactly what you’re looking for, or whether or not they’re Good, Sketchy, or Really Sketchy. If you’re totally stuck, go with the $10 manual switch (you’ve seen it before, beige box, black knob) for the video side, and do the audio manually.
Don’t feel too bad. I just sat through a presentation on an IP KVM that shoots the signal out over cat5e for up to 1000 feet. Each host system has a little VGA/PS2-to-RJ45 dongle, and the cabling runs through a stack of special switches.
Each switch was multiple $k. And each dongle was 200 bucks. For 250 machines.
Not sure I’m understanding the difference here. On a software switch, is the signal going through some sort of logic board instead of just a simple switching mechanism?
Some PC’s will freak out slightly if you unplug the keyboard and mouse repeatedly, which is in essence what a mechanical switch does. An electronic one will provide signal to the computer even when that channel is not selected so the machine doesn’t notice that hardware is vanishing and reappearing.
Doesn’t apply nearly as much for video, so if the OP is just interested in using it on the monitor it’s not so bad (used to be you could buy monitor switches) but I’ve seen the mechanical switches burn out motherboards when used for the K and the M (well, the kb chip, and this was back in the 5 pin DIN days, so get off my lawn)
We had to get several rackmounted ones like these for McKesson’s Canadian group in order to get support. When it was time for the application to go live they didn’t need them since they decided to go with R-admin instead. The only real reason we kept them is b/c we can plug 16 machines into 1 switch rather than 8 with traditional rackmount KVMs.
Everything is too fucking expensive; cables, basic little things like AC adapters…I understand that in the eyes of the world, “Tech = give us all of your fucking money,” but it’s just gotten completely insane. I recently had to buy a three prong to two prong adapter for an old piece of audio equipment (like this),a nd it was FIVE DOLLARS. That shit should have been a QUARTER or something like that! Insane.
Agreed. I decided to electrify my uke. I need a piezo, some audio cables, a 6.5mm socket, and maybe an audio cable. Damn if it wasn’t 10x what they should cost. A cheap piezo? Atleast 10 bucks. Audio cables? 20+. A socket? 3 bucks or so.
Ever priced USB cables at Best Buy or Circuit City? None are cheaper than 30 bucks. I now go to thrift stores or shop from Futurlec.
So a mechanical KVM might short out the inputs on my computer, but an electronic one might not transmit the input signals correctly. That’s awesome. :rolleyes: It’s almost enough to make me wear sackcloth and go live on a mountain in the middle of fucking nowhere.
**Bobotheoptimist **is correct that some PCs don’t like repeated plugging and unplugging, but in these days of USB, that dislike takes the form of needing to reboot on occasion, not shorting out the inputs. So it’s not quite to the sackcloth-and-ashes point yet.
The way the software models work, by the way, is that the KVM switch itself signs up as the external peripheral, and then accepts and translates signals from the actual peripheral. This is all well and good, except that KVM switches don’t support more than two mouse buttons or 103 keys, unless they cost TWO HUNDRED FUCKING DOLLARS. So I elected to go with the hardware version, thanks.
I’ve decided to go this route. I don’t need the K or M anyway, since the Xbox doesn’t use them. Any sort of switch I got was going to have some wasted ports, so I got the cheapest one I could find. It was $12 though - inflation, I guess. On the plus side, it’s all black, which makes it more stealthy, or something.
