Kensington ShareCentral 5
Share USB devices including keyboard, mouse, drives, printers, and USB audio between two computers for ease of use and simple switching from one to the other.
Ease of Use, Performance: 22/25, Look & Feel: 23/25,
Features 24/25, How much I enjoy 23/25
Total: 92/100
The Kensington ShareCentral 5 is the great way to switch your USB devices from one computer to another and share them between the two. In either a work or home environment using two computers is sometimes a must and being able to share devices like printers and hard drives is great but you can even use the same keyboard and mouse combination using the ShareCentral.
The ShareCentral 5 is the great and very easy way to share USB devices that works so well from starting up your computer to easily switching from one to the other. The ShareCentral 5 comes with the switch box, an orange and another white USB cable to connect the two computers to the switch box, power adapter, instructions, CD with drivers, wall mount template, extra switch plates and a cable manager.
The switch box is very simple to use with its removable switch plates so you can customize the box and the switches according to your likes. The switch plates or buttons have a design representing common computer devices on four plates; printer, hard drive, scanner, and mouse/keyboard and three numbered plates. The plates hold onto the switches by a small magnet and tip up when you press on either end so you can grab the end and remove them to replace with another.
Installing the system on either a MAC or Windows PC is as simple as connecting the cables and installing the drivers that you download from the Kensington website, the most current version. I tried using the previous version from the CD and was having some small problems but have had no problems at all with the most current ones from the website.
The orange and white ended cables are for the computers and keeping things straight is easy, on each side of the ShareCentral are a row of lights that indicate which computer has control of the USB device. When the light is on the side toward all the cable connections the white connection has the devices and when the blank side has the lights the orange connection has them.
There is a part of the lights leading to each connection that goes to the computer that is connected to that connection to help you keep things straight when first using the ShareCentral but it is really simple once you use it. I also found that when you first turn a computer on regardless if another computer is on or off the ShareCentral will switch all the devices over to that computer.
You can control each device separately and the one connection has two USB connections for that device so you can have two devices controlled by one switch such as a mouse and keyboard or printer and scanner on the same switch. The other three connections are single USB slots so you have up to 5 devices being able to be controlled using the ShareCentral 5.
The ShareCentral also automatically switches printers over to which ever computer is trying to send print jobs to it using Windows File and Printer Sharing. This automatic printer sharing is a feature of Windows so is available on Windows computers only and can be turned on and off using the switch on the bottom of the ShareCentral.
Devices being controlled between the two computers will need drivers for each device on each computer so you have to install them at some time. When you switch back and forth it is using a plug and play type connection so the computer will take a few seconds to recognize the new device and it should be ready for use without any further action.
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