Here’s a USB device that lets your laptop (or more specifically, a special computer program running on your laptop) to serve as the monitor, mouse and keyboard of another normally-headless computer.
I’ve needed one of these on at least twenty separate occasions, like when a computer crashes and I need to see what it’s trying to display on its monitor. Further, being able to take screenshots (of even screencasts) of what a failing computer is doing as it fails, without special/crappy software needing to run on said failing computer, would be the bomb on many occasions.
I could sure use one, I’ll you that right now, and my desire for it will scale with how many computers we’re sitting on and trying to keep working all at once.
Frankly, I’m still a little baffled by this thing’s continuing non-existence.
September 23, 2008 at 1:29 am
As before, your doohickie *does* exist. Your ideas are good — your google-fu is not.
http://www.epiphan.com/products/frame-grabbers/kvm2usb/
It is a bit expensive, at over $200, but it does exactly what you are describing.
September 23, 2008 at 1:51 am
Man. Right again.
September 23, 2008 at 5:29 am
I hereby christen the category “done already” for these cases.