Belkin Flip For Mac
COMPTON, Calif. -- Belkin Corporation announces Flip(TM) for Mac mini, the first solution designed to share one monitor, keyboard, and mouse between the Mac mini and a second computer, saving money and desktop space.
123Macmini.com - Accessories - Review: Belkin Flip for Mac mini Review: Belkin Flip for Mac mini Search Web Site Menu User Community Mac Links & Feeds Mac Mini Gear Guide (4) (5) (5) (9) (5) (3) (2) (4) (4) (16) (1) Our Info Mac Mini Accessories Review: Belkin Flip for Mac mini Tuesday January 17, 2006 12:00 AM EST The is an attractive KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switch with audio support and built-in cabling designed especially for the Mac mini. The Flip comes packaged in a light blue and white box. In the box you will find the Flip for Mac mini, 5V DC/2.6A Power Adapter, CD with optional switching software, User Manual, and Quick Installation Guide.
The 21-page User Manual is written well and provides ample information for the setup and usage of this product. Flip was designed to stack directly below or on top of the Mac mini. It's made out of white plastic and measures 6.5-inch wide x 6.5-inch deep x 1.0-inch tall. There are five touch-sensitive buttons on its front panel that allow you to switch between computers, control volume, mute sound, and eject disks from your Mac mini.
The eject button will only work with Mac computers. The touch-sensitive buttons are really responsive and do a good job. They also give the front a clean look without being intrusive. Flip also features two white LEDs on the front panel to let you know what computer is currently being accessed. The white LEDs are bright and complement the looks of the Mac mini's front LED. On the back of Flip, you will find the power jack, VGA monitor port, built-in cables, USB mouse port, USB keyboard port, and speaker jack. Everything felt solid and worked well except for the speaker jack.
Our speaker jack was loose fitting and didn't secure the 1/8' stereo plug into the jack very well. As a result, our audio was filled with static when the cable was moved around. We don't know if this is an isolated case with our Flip or something that is going to be an issue with other units. Flip includes nice quality white and gray built-in cables. Cable number is for the Mac mini.
It measures 2-feet long, and includes 6-inch USB and audio cables. Cable number two is for connecting your second computer to the Flip.
It measures 6-feet long, and includes 12-inch USB and audio cables. We appreciated the longer second cable for giving us extra room to work with. There are three methods you can use to switch between the connected computers. You can use the touch-sensitive buttons, a desktop icon, or key switching. You will need to install the optional switching software to use the desktop icon and key switching.
We liked that you can select different key combinations from the for key switching. The switching software also allows you to switch your audio from one computer to the next without switching computers, so you can listen to iTunes on your Mac mini while you work on your other computer. We came away impressed with how well the software worked.
Flip fully supports all USB Apple keyboards or PC keyboards, including all function keys. Our and worked great.
We didn't have any trouble with them while switching back and forth between computers. If you have a keyboard with built-in USB port, you may connect your mouse to the keyboard and just connect the keyboard to the Flip.
Flip is able to support resolutions up to 2048x1536 at 65Hz and works with any LCD or CRT monitor with a VGA (HDDB15) connection. You can use a DVI monitor with a. Flip does not support direct DVI connections from monitors. The lack of direct DVI connections was a big disappointment. It also would have been nice for Belkin to include a DVI to VGA adapter in the box. We tested Flip with a few different monitors, and the results were mixed.
The video on a 19' Dell LCD running at 1280x1024 was blurry and showed signs of ghosting. Our 20' Apple Cinema display running at 1680x1050 also showed signs of ghosting.
The video on a 19' Viewsonic CRT and 17' KDS CRT running at 1024x768 looked pretty good. All in all, we were somewhat disappointed with the lackluster video quality. There are definitely better KVMs out there, but none of them will look as good sitting underneath your Mac mini. Overall, we can recommend this product to our readers and give it a score of 3 out of 4 stars. The Belkin Flip for Mac mini is available now and has a suggested retail price of $84.99.
Pros: Stylish design compliments Mac mini. Touch-sensitive buttons work great Built-in audio support and switching Switching software works great Nice quality cables Saves desk space Supports all Mac keyboards and function keys Three-year warranty Cons: Does not support direct DVI connections Lackluster video quality Loose fitting speaker jack More Pictures: Click to enlarge More Information: 123Macmini.com has not been authorized, sponsored, or approved by Apple Computer, Inc. All logos and trademarks in this site are property of their respective owners.
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Belkin Flip For Mac Pro
This device allows you to use one keyboard and one mouse to control two computers, by using the switch to move between the two. I had an added complication because I wanted to use a keyboard that had special multimedia keys (control playback, volume of sound etc.) If you pick the wrong type of KVM you find that the multimedia keys don't work anymore. The thing to watch out for is that the switch does not have an emulator function - this is used to reduce the amount of time when switching between computers, so that the switch pretends to be a keyboard and mouse to both computers all the time, the trouble is that with this mode the KVMs tend to pretend to be a low spec keyboard instead of the multimedia keyboard you want to use. The solution is to find one without the emulation function, but a downside of that is that as you switch from one computer to another the computer tends to recognise the keyboard as newly plugged in (so on Windows you get the ding-dong sound) and takes a few seconds for the keyboard and mouse to become operative. But that's worth it for me to be able to use the multimedia keys. I'm using the KVM with a Ducky 9008 Mechanical keyboard (Cherry MX brown switches), to switch between a PC running Windows 7, and a Macbook Pro laptop running OSX10.8.2 See my separate review of the Ducky 9008 keyboard (and comparison with Das Keyboard Professional Silent).