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D-Link KVM-221 |
What’s among the latest trend in computing? Two personal computers, that’s what.
Now I’m NOT talking about one PC at the office and one PC at home and maybe even a third computer in the form of a laptop. I’m talking about two computers in the same spot – IE your home office. I’ll explain.
The single home PC often has questionable security (EG: Usually weak passwords; if any password at all); is used by several family remember and often has the same setup for everybody. So, while l’il Johnny is waiting for a few LimeWire downloads to finish up, he may be able to access your office system with the click of an on-desktop VPN or RDP shortcut. Now, he’s into your stuff at work and who knows what he might find there; including all that confidential email you keep ONLY at your office.
Security, however, is just one of the reasons you need a home office “production” computer and a second, older “recreation” computer. Here’s what I mean:
Let’s imagine you get a brand new PC: a slick new 3 GHz dual processor quad core unit with plenty of memory and a massive hard drive. Keep it well protected with AV and AS software; house all of your important information on it and do not allow anybody else to use it. Move all of the critical data – including the 60 GB of illegal music and all the photos you want to keep - from your old PC to this new one. The old PC becomes your recreation computer and from there you can download all the “free” shareable music you want; surf any weird sites without worry and use it for research. For example you can blow away the hard drive and install a copy of the latest version of Ubuntu or Red Hat. Or, get your hands on a copy of the Windows 7 Beta and install that. Try all the free downloads you can.
For example, I installed Windows 7 plus the Opera and Chrome web browsers as well as LimeWire and Bear Share on the “recreation” PC. Even though I downloaded and installed the free AVG software plus Windows Defender, I wouldn’t dare do any of this with my production computer. Still, it works fine on older Pentium 4 with 1 GB or memory and a 60 GB hard drive. It might even be a good place for your second Facebook account – you know – the one with the hotmail email address and a goofy photo of you that you use with only certain people.
The most important criteria is you should be able to re-format your hard drive and re-install a new OS on it at any one time without worrying about data, photos and key files as they should be on your production PC.
This gets better if you spend about $50 and purchase a D-Link KVM-221 KVM switch allows you to have two PCs sharing the same Keyboard/Video/Mouse. It is ideal for the home office where business files are kept on one computer and personal files on another. The built-in audio support allows you to share a set of speakers with two computers, meaning you can listen to iTunes, Internet radio or voice conferences on one computer while surfing the web or performing other tasks simultaneously on the other. In other words, use one computer as a dedicated music server while having full access to the other computer’s system resources. Since the KVM-221 manages two computers using only one monitor, keyboard, and mouse, it frees up your desktop space, too.
However, the single best reason you should consider this kind of setup relates to your own personal research. After all, the best way to evaluate a new browser, free software or some new websites is to check it out yourself but not compromise your main computer. Hey, people use two monitors to increase productivity – why not two computers?
It is often said you never really throw “old” hardware away – you just find other uses for it. So, with the combination of low hardware prices, free or inexpensive operating systems and other software, it is now worthwhile to be running two PC’s.
Gregory B. Michetti of the Alberta-based systems integration firm Michetti Information Solutions, Inc. can be reached via www.michetti.com or on the Brent Loucks morning show at News Talk 650 CKOM Radio www.newstalk650.com
