Saving Space: 4 Port KVM Switches

Aten Masterview ACS-1724

The only switch box with USB 2.0 support in this test group is the Masterview ACS-1724 from Aten. On its console, the switch box has PS/2 connections, while the PC clients are connected to the box via USB port. On the back side are two additional USB sockets for USB 2.0 devices, such as hard drives or CD/DVD drives. One big annoyance is that when switching over, it always takes several seconds until the client PC's operating system recognizes and installs the USB 2.0 device, as well as the keyboard and mouse. The resources required for this slow down applications - for example, rendering programs - and therefore also distort the benchmark results. Aten clearly needs to make some big improvements in this area. Switching over occurs either using a hotkey or the only button on the box, which connects the client computers port by port only. It is not possible to directly select an individual computer with the button.

Only one large plastic button on the KVM box lets you switch over.

The KVM switch can handle two additional USB 2.0 devices.

Siggy Moersch