KVM (the hardware, not the emulation) without the V?
 

I have a few computers (at least two...more if it's not too much money) that I'd like to share the keyboard and mouse on. I have quite a few situations where it is useful to be able to do something on Windows and something else on Linux, so I don't really care about the monitor-sharing aspect of a KVM. Are there KVMs that only share the USB for keyboard and mouse? If so a) what do I search for on Amazon or Newegg and b) how do I make sure if I have something like a DasKeyboard, that is supports the USB no differently than if I'd plugged in directly to the computer?

We've been using the Avocent 1000 8 port switch at our desks for a couple of years. They'll do USB and PS/2 so worked for an older system I had with PS/2 keyboard connection at the same time it worked for others I had with USB only. I've had this hooked to a Windows Laptop, A RHEL desktop, a RHEL server and to my local Raritan KVM that we used to do KVM on all of our data center servers. Switching between these things has been a breeze. (We got rid of the local Raritan box and use a web interface exclusively now for accessing that remote Raritan setup. Raritan makes KVMs for data center that can be daisy chained together and we have several of those in our data center.)

On a quick check online it appears there is a 4 port model of the same Avocent 1000 switch.

The only issues I've seen:
1) It defaults to Ctrl-Ctrl for soft switch to other systems which caused us a problem but this can be changed (e.g. to Space-Space which we did).
2) It beeps on switch between systems which isn't a problem but periodically something happens where it seems to have an issue and causes fast beeping which annoys everyone around if your in a cube farm like we are. Simply power cycling it stops that. Also turning off the beep notification between switching seems to prevent that from occurring as frequently as it would with the notifcation turned on.

This one? http://www.amazon.com/Avocent-Switch...s=Avocent+1000 .... a lot of money ... I'd rather deal with having two keyboard or something. Hopefully you meant another?

That appears to be the 4 port model equivalent to the 8 port I use.

Another 4 port KVM on Amazon that says it does USB is:
http://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-B00...YZ2V4ZS666VAQR

I haven't used that one but it is half what the Avocent is quoted as.

Since I didn't pay for the one I use I didn't know its cost until today. I just know most of the folks in the admin teams here use the Avocent Switchview 1000 without issues.

Previously we used Apex KVMs like the one below but I don't think those had any USB connections though we could use USB to PS/2 dongles with them if I recall correctly:
http://www.amazon.com/APEX-EL-80DT-P...words=apex+kvm
I do know on a couple of them we had one connection out of 8 that wouldn't work at all which is OK so long as you don't need all 8 and it wasn't a problem on all of them.

Yeah, I think both of those also have monitor. Which might be part of why they're so expensive. I wonder if there's just Keyboard/USB and that's it. Shouldn't be expensive.

Just realized my title should probably be without the V. I was thinking M for monitor, but I realize now it's most likely mouse.

As soon as I realized that what I really wanted was to share USB across computers (didn't HAVE to be keyboard or mouse!) it was easy to google and get what I wanted. Something like:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...AXN6X511J1MN7F

Just needed the right paradigm shift that came from correcting the title. Haha.

I guess now I'm just curious if anyone know knows which of these would most likely support all the USB keyboard features best.

I ended up getting http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...rch_detailpage and it works perfectly for what I wanted. Just wanted to put that out there in case anyone found this thread while Googling.