I initially thought that setting up the KNV104D would be a cinch, since the procedure is quite similar to my Belkin OmniView SE that I've had for quite some time now-I was quite disappointed to witness some annoying snags, though. The cables were well-labeled and it shouldn't have taken long to plug everything in, except for the fact that they were way too short. From my measurements, the cables that E&J had included in my package were only about 4 feet long; perfect if all your computers are sitting side-by-side, but very annoying if they're spread out around my room like how my computers are set. Eventually, I had to pull my computers closer to the switch to get everything set up.

I asked E&J about these cables, and they said that they did have longer cables available (some as long as 33m!), but from my experience with the installation process, my thoughts towards the KNV104D has already been soured.

Once all the cables were plugged in, it was just a matter of turning on the computers and switching to the one that I wanted to use. Using the device is very easy, as all one needs to do is press the corresponding button to whichever computer you wish to switch to at the front of the unit. I like this a lot since this allows instant access without having to waste time cycling through all the computers with only 1 button like with the Belkin OmniView SE.

Another way of switching between the computers is, of course, with the on-screen display feature of the KNV104D. With only two or three presses of the CTRL key on the keyboard, the on-screen display shows up and then the user just has to press the number button on their computer that corresponds with their computer. The menu also allows the user to name their computers so to avoid confusion between multiple computers. This is a nice feature, but it's quite excessive for a unit that supports only 4 computers--it would be useful for more than 8 computers.

All in all, the unit's usability is very good; the quality, however, is another story.

It is worth a mention that the unit produced some noticeable ghosting on the display even at resolutions of only 1152x864 @ 75Hz; the ghosting did mostly disappear at resolutions below 800x600, however. Nevertheless, this was quite a ways away from the claimed 1920x1440 and is not acceptable at all. After some extensive testing, I realized that most of the ghosting was not actually caused by the KNV104D unit itself, but by the included cables since when I used Belkin's cables, most of the ghosting (not all of it, unfortunately) disappeared.

On to: Conclusion