I bought this switch for my home office, to try to cut down on the desk clutter of having my laptop and desktop going at the same time. It was VERY simple to hook up, and did indeed cut the clutter considerably (the laptop has a docking station, so it allowed me to get rid of the second keyboard & mouse).

When it worked well, it was excellent. Switching time was under a second between the two environments, and the compact size made it easy to utilize. While it comes with software for Windows systems to switch ports, I found it much easier to just press the button on the unit to switch.

Where this unit falls down is that it is USB-powered. For some reason, it would intermittently fail to get sufficient power from one or the other system to recognize it was there, and would refuse to switch to it. Calling technical support got nowhere (other than an explanation that it was a USB power issue, and no, they don't have a fix, go buy the more expensive unit...). The issue was more prevalent on the laptop, as it happened only when the system was being powered up (coming back from hibernation worked consistently, cold starts were the only spot where it failed).

The workaround I finally got to was when this happened (about once every 2-3 weeks), to power both systems down, disconnect the USB connection from the desktop, and power up the laptop - that got it to work 99% of the time, then reconnect & power up the desktop.

Overall, it's a great solution to running two systems, although if one is a laptop, you may be better off getting an externally-powered KVM instead.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 75
Driver Availability: Windows, Linux, and Mac