Networking Reviews

I use it to switch keyboard/video/mouse between two systems, but it's pretty flaky. Sometimes you have to hit the button several times to get it to switch, and since it takes several seconds for the switch to take effect, you have to click ... move the mouse around and wait to see if it worked ... click ... move the mouse around and wait to see if it worked ... etc. Annoying. It works okay except for that, but it's also on the expensive side. There's got to be something better out there.

Good: comes with all the cables you need to setup a switch for two systems to share a monitor, USB keyboard and USB mouse. Reasonably priced. Small size. Supposedly has hot switch capability.
Bad: Recognized desktop, but wouldn't recognize laptop and wouldn't switch between systems. Basically my primary system would work as long as it was the first and only system I used. As soon as I hit the switch it was time to shut down and reboot both systems. I'm a well-above average user and I tried everything I could think of to make it work, read the directions from the start, booted up separately to allow initialization, checked the knowledge base website. After several frustrating hours I returned it.

I bought this KVM a few weeks ago after scouring the web for USB KVM boxes. This was one of the few out there that qualified. The reason I needed a USB switch was for my wife's computer, which is an Apple Power Mac G4. The other computer hooked up to it is a clone Pentium 3 system. So far, we have not had any problems with the unit. In general, we tend to put the Apple in sleep mode when we shut in down rather then power it off altogether. When we switch back to the Apple after using the PC for a while, the Apple automatically turns on without having to wake it up. On the PC side, I am running Windows XP, and I normally shut it down in hibernation mode. Switching from the Apple to the PC, all I have to do is hit the power button, and I'm up and running with both the mouse and keyboard completely functional.

One side note - I am using the Macintosh USB keyboard that came with the Power Mac, and the USB mouse is a Microsoft Optical. So far, both of these devices have worked great between the two computers. Also, we have an HP DeskJet printer which we share between the two computers, and I plugged the printer into one of the two USB slots that are on the front of the KVM. So far, it's worked great.

Other then it being PC and MAC friendly, this is a great system if only for the fact that it comes complete with everything you need to set it up - no need to go out and buy more cables. The only drawback I could see is that you are limited to sharing the KVM between only two computers. But if what you are looking for is a good (and inexpensive) way to share one keyboard, mouse, and monitor with two computers (whether it is a MAC or PC), then this would be a sound solution for you.

Are you serious! Go to just about any computer store and by the 3 ft cable for ($) and spend the other 18 bucks (plus S&H) elseware. You won't get faster speeds, better compression, more chicks, or even laid with these or any other cables.

Wow! After switching to this cable my Ethernet speeds increased by 21.34%. I liked it so much that I bought their R11 cable for my 56K modem. Awesome! My modem now achieves the full 56kbps speed, before it only did 52kbps!!?? Simply incredible. They call it "Internet Cable", and they mean it!

Then I bought their killer USB cables. OMG, now EVERYTHING works better! My USB HP DeskJet prints colors so much more vivid now! And my Kodak DC-4800 uploads pictures that are soooo, soooo clear. Say goodbye to that "smuggy" JPEG distortion.

I also bought some of their serial cable to work with my modern home's X11 system. Unreal! My programmable-automatic light dimmers are so gradual that you don't even notice them working! Careful with this one, as you may end up in the dark before you know it and bump into a wall. Heh.

Monster Cable roCKs!

Yes, I, too, have noticed increased download and upload speeds. These cables are fantastic! Previously, I'd bought raw cable from Home Depot -- around 50 bucks for 500 feet -- and a cable tool to make my own cables from scratch. My download speeds were okay.

But then I bought a couple sets of these Monster cables and wow! I noticed download speeds in excess of my stated DSL speeds!

Excellent. I only wish they'd make them in longer lengths!

I called Iogear after everything was set up, and they told me that this one doesnt work with wireless. I called back and asked what they suggest, and they said try GCS1732 or GSC1734, they should work with wireless. After my call, Im questioning the quality of Iogears tech support.
Ofcouse the models that work with wireless are priced between 140 and 190. I think I will just have to pull my 17" CRT out of storage for a while.
Until LCD prices come down a little.

I have three machines hooked up to this box and, so far, it's performing no worse than the Belkin and other boxes I've used in the past. Since those vendors charge about as much for one set of cables as this entire unit costs, that makes it fairly impressive.

The only complaint I might have so far is that the fit and finish of the box feels a bit sub-par. The case is a bit flimsy looking but, I suspect, as long as it's not abused, this won't impact functionality.

Video shows absolutely NO noticeable degradation, which I couldn't say about the Belkins I've used. Switching works fine. My vanilla PS/2 keyboard and mouse work without incident.

I'm going to try a USB mouse with a PS/2 adaptor just for grins. If it doesn't work, no big deal since the manufacturer made no promises. But I've heard stories of them working fine.

I don't regret the purchase and I'd buy it again. It's a great deal.

I recently bought this switch, in a package which includes 4 6-foot kvm cables, from another vendor, and I'm very happy with it. It works perfectly.

Unlike one of the reviewers below, my USB Logitech mouse, connected via a PS/2 adapter, has absolutely no problems, neither with the buttons, nor wheel, nor scrolling. I suspect his mouse problem is due to the driver. I use the standard Microsoft PS/2 mouse driver. You don't necessarily need a "pure" PS/2 mouse, though the instructions indicate that serial to PS/2 will not work.

The video quality is also great, no loss or distortion whatsoever. I was actually prepared to see some loss in video, so I was very pleasantly surprised.

The keyboard works great too, as do the hot keys for switching ports. I even connected the mouse and monitor to a DOS machine that uses an older keyboard connection. So for that I have to swap keyboards. Nevertheless, the video and mouse still work fine.

I chose this switch after much review. The decision came down to Belkin vs IOGear. Given the overall consensus and price, I chose IOGear. Also, I found that the cables are very important. So I think it makes sense to buy a package which includes cables; unless you need much longer ones, in which case be prepared to pay extra for quality. Video quality though is dependant on cable length, so shorter is better.

When used on a USB2.0 port on my Win2000 box it causes
a hard crash during driver installation. Works OK
in a USB1.1 port. Case does get quite warm during use.

I bought it because it looked cute and small. Used it for 7 months, and the middle 2 ports gave up. All of a sudden it wouldn't recognize the keyboard, mouse or printer with those ports.
I tried plugging in some other things, those ports can still give power to my cooling fan though.

Other than two minor flaws this hub does just fine. It would be nice if it could simply be system powered, as are others, without the need for A/C. Also the unit does need some "cool down" time before you put it away.

In a nutshell:

2 units - 2 broken fans within a month - and these things can cook eggs while the fan is running. I want to replace the fan with something better than the crap they have, but they force me to RMA it since it's snapped together... not screwed. Which sucks because I wouldn't mind replacing this cheap crap-fan with something quieter & better quality.

Yes, I can agree to people already mentioning THE NOISE this device produces. It was so unusual to hear such a loud sound from LinkSys product. I have several different LinkSys devices and all are quiet. This one is not. Beware! It is louder than most computers are nowadays. LinkSys - oh no, CISCO as now owner of LinkSys should be ashamed. EG008W is intended for HOME use, isn't it? Not for noisy server room but for our sweet home? Tell us how to get it less noisy. Much less! This current noise level is unacceptable (it sounds loudly as I am writing this commentary).

If anybody has found good replacement fan and/or knows procedure how to replace the noisy fan please write your advice here!

What every one has sed about it being a bad switch is all BS.

i just got mine today and iv put it to hard work and push it to its limits and its ran perfectly.

"When my daughter touched it at my direction she received first degree burns on her fingers" that is such a big lie, 1. if it got that hot the plastic case would have melted 2. it would not have past the UL test

"warning, this is loud" its not that loud at all, heck my laptop is louder than this switch.

the speed is amazing, i copy a 1.7gb file from one computer to the other in 40sec vs 10min on a 100mbps network as long as u have gigabit NICs

I fought with this card for three days on Windows 98 SE and was never able to get it up and going. USBMAN.COM does not recommend the VIA chipset.

This USB 2.0 port might work fine, but, if your system does not have a PCI slot with revision 2.2, forget it. Unfortunately, I didn't check first. After installing the card and the supplied software, my system said the card was working fine, but no USB device was detected or recognized. I checked my system and found my PCI slots were actually revision 2.1. I installed a Belkin USB 2.0 dual-port PCI card instead, which is compatable with PCI revision 2.1, and everything worked fine.

It's fast,...and it works great. If you need quick USB 2.0 connectivity, like for an external MP3 player, this card is perfect.

They work for a month and poop out. go with another brand

Great looking unit, but didn't live very long. I've had some Belking USB1.1 hubs that did the same. Fine for a while then just upped and stopped working. One even sparked whenever you plugged its power supply in!

This hub has worked very well with my USB 1.1 ports. I recently tried it on my USB 2.0 PCI card. Initially, Windows XP didn't want to recognize the hub. A few switched ports and reboots later, problem solved. It is now running on USB 2.0 just fine, as advertised. In retrospect, my decision to pay a little more for a higher-quality product was a good one.

Of course, since no product is perfect, here are a few negative aspects:

1) All the USB ports are in the back of the product; it would be more convenient to have them in front.

2) The ports are quite close together. If you're using normal USB cables, you shouldn't have a problem, but some users with wider devices such as a flash card reader or a USB flash drive may have to unplug a cable or two to get the room they need to plug their devices in.

3) The AC adapter is HUGE; make sure you have plenty of room on your wall outlet or power strip to plug that monster in.

I picked up a DSS 16+ switch and it definitely improved our network of 14 computers. We were using the two uplinks. I purchased the system in January and it has a 3 year warranty.

Yesterday, it died completely. We lost all our ports. You cannot get through D-Link tech support by phone, and e-mail has been slow to get an RMA.

In retrospect, I think the slightly more expensive Link-Sys switches may be manufactured with better quality control.

Pete

We had this switch for about a year. It worked well, but was not exceptional. This week, two of our workstations couldn't connect to the server. The problem turned out to be that several ports on the switch had gone bad. I've uplinked a spare hub to the DSS-16+ and things are working fine for now. I plan do some research and get a more reliable switch.

I previously owned 2 D-Link hubs and they worked great and are still in good shape, but they are Hubs. That is why I bought this 16 port Switch. And now my Small Office Network is much faster. (As would any network that traded in a hub for a switch.)

I have owned this for 3 months now and everything still works perfect. I have never traced a problem in my network down to this switch. Ever since we purchased it nobody in the office has complained about the speed being to slow.

I have and will recommend this product to any and everyone who could use this or other D-Link switches.

I bought one of these recently but was sadly disappointed. It is possible it is defective and I'll try returning it for a replacement. Here is what didn't work:

Booting a system gave the old "no keyboard found press F1" oxymoronic error message. Plugging the keyboard directly into the USB port of the computer didn't not have this problem.

The manual says to press 1+2 to "reset" the unit which I tried, but it seemed to go into auto-seek instead.

The manual and website were no help, of course.

If it turns out to be defective when I return it, I'll update the review (upward I hope!).

On the very positive side, the switch was really simple to set up. However, it doesn't work correctly with Win XP Tablet edition (mouse will go crazy and, if you have a monitor on the tablet that can switch from portrait to lanscape, it will always startup sideways regardless of your settings). Also, doesn't support the Apple key on a Mac -- but does work fine with Mac otherwise. Can be annoying for power keyboard users because the hot keys for switching are automatically on and anytime you press Ctrl twice it prompts you to switch (but, other than that, it's really great on Win XP Professional or Win 2000 machines). I'm still using the switch, though, for lack of better options ... it's better than being without one. And better than the competitors I've seen.

I don't use wireless mouse nor keyboard at home, so no complain there. It works perfectly fine with the USB keyboard and USB mouse. I have the switch connected to my laptop and my desktop machine and I switch between the two machines using Ctrl + Ctrl hot key. It's really nice being able to see where I was and where I'm going. And it shows which machine the shared USB is connected to.

As another person indicated in the reivew of this product, it doesn't have a feature to turn off the beep when switching the machines. It gets kinda annoying at times, but it really isn't a big deal.

I have experienced no mouse skipping after switching, which I used to come across a lot with PS2 type of switches before. It's a really good switch if you have two machines you would like to use and all your peripherals are USB.

This could be just abad fun. Nowdays every notebook have a faxmodem and a network card. Than ? This is not a worthy thing...
The price is not correct !

I'm using 3 of these cards on laptops in a home network, together with a desktop using Linksys's internal phoneline card. I finally have it all working and it works fine, but it was a struggle. The laptops are all different; configured to work with 3 different networks at work and 2 schools. Also 3 op systems: ME, 98, 95. Linksys's supplied documentation was simply not complete enough -- had to go to the Microsoft product support site for their help articles. Spent probably 25 hours altogether. Admittedly, I'm a first timer, but aren't most customers for this kind of product first timers?

Worked great! I installed it on a network with another brand of card and another level of windows and it came right up after downloading the Windows XP driver from Linksys. Could be faster, but it was only $39.