Review on 🔀 Belkin F1DS104U Omniview USB KVM Switch with 4-Port by Young Toulson

This is my review of the Belkin 4 USB/Audio/VGA KVM Switch. I share with you the following experiences and advice. First, you can't connect a USB keyboard without the device beeping continuously. However, if you have a wireless keyboard/mouse combo with a single USB dongle on the receiver, you must plug it into the KVM's USB mouse port to use both the wireless mouse and keyboard. What causes the keyboard not to beep? Which will drive you crazy I spent about 2 hours trying to update the firmware to the NO KEYBOARD BEEP version available from Belkin. This requires enabling the parallel port in the BIOS and making sure the BIOS port is set to NORMAL and not ECP, EPP, BI-DIRECTIONAL, etc. As far as I can tell, this is NOT documented. In addition, Belkin recommends using firmware. Driver fix for Win2K and WinXP machines before flashing the firmware because the firmware updater doesn't recognize the parallel port properly without updating the driver. A friend also noticed that you need to run the updater in compatibility mode (Win98) on WinXP and Win2K. The firmware update took about 5-10 minutes. After the update, you will be prompted to unplug ALL cables from the device to reset it. ALL WIRES MUST BE DISCONNECTED, TURNED ON. Be prepared for it to beep again when resetting. When I heard about it I honestly thought the firmware was broken. I read online that this KVM DOES NOT WORK WITH DOCK STATIONS so I bought the unit to use with my Dell desktop and laptop/port replicator. Luckily it worked and I was able to switch from desktop to laptop/dock without too much trouble. Sometimes when I switch USB, the computer I'm going to use fails to reinitialize the USB device and WinXP throws a small error. I just go back and forth for a second to force a reinitialization. Try switching to an empty KVM channel if necessary. I'm wary of using the built-in KVM USB hub (2 ports) because of this USB switching issue. I was planning to connect a USB hard drive between two computers, but I'm concerned that I'll (a) lose data or (b) damage the hard drive if I switch between the two computers, especially if USB switching doesn't work . It always works. So far I've used it while playing high-resolution games on my desktop, which hasn't caused any additional issues like video or USB bandwidth issues. Good luck with your purchase.