Press Any Key

It seems like no computer upgrade/project is ever as simple as it should be. My new cordless keyboard and mouse set for the Mac arrived today. It’s a Logitech Cordless Desktop S 530 Laser. The receive is a small USB adapter that connects to a larger “dock” adapter. The receiver can be removed from the dock thus allowing one to use the mouse and/or keyboard with another computer without having to reach to the back of the computer to unplug the USB. The keys are layed out for a Mac system.

My goal was to use the cordless set with my IOGear MiniView Micro USB PLUS KVM Switch so I could share the keyboard, mouse, and an LCD with a Windows system. Getting it all to work properly was a problem. If I plugged the receiver’s USB connection into the USB keyboard port on the switch then mouse clicks would stop working as soon as I logged into OS X. If I plugged the receiver into the USB mouse port on the switch the mouse worked fine but the keyboard command to switch computers would not work.

Then I remembered that I had a similar Logitech set working on this system previously but I hadn’t installed any software. So I proceeded to uninstall the “special” software that came with the keyboard and mouse. To access an uninstall program I had to insert the installation CD and then run the uninstall program from that CD (simply disabling the LCCDaemon did not fix the problem – it required a complete uninstall of the software).

As a result I’ve lost functionality of some of the extra buttons on the side of the keyboard but I rarely use those anyway. The mouse clicks now work when the receiver is plugged into the keyboard port and I can switch between computers using the keyboard.

The switch isn’t very fancy and the only way to switch between computers is to send a command with a specific set of keystrokes to the switch. It does not have a physical toggle on the KVM.

So far the cordless keyboard and mouse set has worked great since I uninstalled the software and I can effortlessly switch between my Mac and Windows computers.

A spell-check and an addition of photos to this post will be completed later…