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May 4th, 2023 03:00
Connecting dual monitors with 2 laptops
Hi,
I've found a few answers to this.
But if I'm going to do it I'd like to firstly have the cheapest way of doing it and the best.
So at the moment I've got a work laptop a Latitude 5400 connected to two samsung curved displays via a D6000 hub using the usb c connection.
If I want to use my personal laptop which is a Dell G3 I disconnect the usb c from latitude and then put the usb a converter into the G3.
Is there a way I can switch between the two laptops? I've looked at kvm switches but don't know which one is best, and also wondered if there was another way without too much investment?
Many Thanks in advance
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jphughan
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May 5th, 2023 06:00
@Watson306 If you don’t care about maintaining the ability of the dock to provide power to the attached system — which the G3 might not even support anyway — then you can get a simple USB host switch like this. Connect the D6000 to one of the peripheral ports (using its USB-A adapter), and connect the two host ports to your two systems.
If you DO care about retaining the power delivery capability, I don’t have an answer for you. There are some much more expensive USB host switches that incorporate USB-C and allow a power source to be switched as well, but those are designed to achieve that by accepting peripherals and a separate conventional USB-C power-only device, meaning a wall charger. They’re not designed to switch a device that is both acting as a peripheral and providing power as is the case with a dock. If such a device exists, I haven’t seen it.
A KVM won’t help you on its own. KVMs are typically used either with desktops or with laptops that each have their OWN dock, meaning the KVM would be placed between each dock’s outputs and your switched peripherals, not between the laptops and your single dock. That’s an effective solution if your G3 can fully support a dock — which again I’m not sure it can — but it’s obviously more expensive and involves more clutter.
What I’ve done to switch a dock between two systems as I do when working from home is simply to place the laptops one on top of the other such that the USB-C ports are aligned. Then I’ll have a separate power source connected to the “conventional” power input so that the undocked system can always be powered. And then I just manually move the dock cable. And then when I have my work system docked, I use Remote Desktop to connect to my personal system (this requires my personal system to use Windows Pro rather than Home), and now I can interact with both systems easily. Windows Remote Desktop supports multiple displays as truly independent displays, and then I can just run full screen when I basically want to be using my personal laptop, or minimize that session when I want to see my work laptop. Or I can start the session deliberately in single-screen mode so I can achieve a split when I want and can still minimize that session to have two displays for work when needed.