The front panel shows individual port select buttons, a feature especially useful for any KVM bigger than 2-ports.  Nothing can be more of a time-waster than pressing one SELECT button and cycling through ports before getting to the desired one.  Beside each button is a small window covering a pair of LEDs showing port status and which is the actively selected port. 

One test we wanted to perform is determining if the SwitchView DVI is a DVI-I KVM.  DVI-I denotes a DVI port with both the analog and digital pins active.  Other DVI KVMs are simply DVI-D KVMs, meaning only the digital pins are switched.  The significance of this is having the ability to use types of PCs and monitors - analog HDB15 and digital DVI-D. 

First, we connect a DVI-I splitter cable, easily found on the web.  This dongle splits the DVI-I signal to a DVI-D digital-only port, and a HDB15 analog-only port:

For the monitor, we use a Dell 2405FPW with its DVI-D and HDB15 inputs.  For our test machines, we have three desktop systems, all of which using the default DVI connectors on their video cards, and one notebook system which only has a HDB15 output.  The SwitchView DVI is going to switch between the four machines, and the Dell monitor will have to switch between the DVI-D and HDB15 input when necessary.

Setup was simple, however the thick cables attached to the back of the KVM easily lifted the unit off the tabletop.  Some cable management was necessary to keep the unit solidly planted on the table.  The power supply is a large linear DC adapter without any kind of licking mechanism on the jack side of the KVM.  This means the power can be pulled out inadvertently.  Had Avocent used a switching adapter, it would have saved outlet space, and also be much more power efficient. 

Once all computers we connected and the KVM console was working, we began testing the switching through hot-keys and the front-panel buttons.  All computers worked as expected, including all of the macro keys, buttons, and scroll wheels on the input devices.  Hot-key keyboard switching is accomplished through hitting the scroll-lock button twice, then additional keys for the command.  When scroll lock is hit twice, an audible BEEP is heard to confirm that the KVM is ready for that switching command.

As for the display, the DVI-D only outputs worked well, and no image degradation was apparent.  As for the analog video signals, the KVM annoyingly shifted the phase and timing slightly, forcing us to manually adjust the image on the monitor to properly align the pixels.  Yes, the Avocent SwitchView DVI is a DVI-I KVM switch.  One can see the value of this KVM in situations where systems with both analog and digital video outputs are present, such as in test lab.

A very important discovery with this DVI-I splitter configuration was that if a computer with a DVI-I output is used, it FIRST checks if there is an analog monitor connected.  If it detects one, it will prefer to output the signal there, and not through the DVI-D.  Now since the KVM has both the analog and digital output connected to the LCD inputs, the computers with DVI-I ports sense the presence of the analog, and decides not to enable the DVI-D part of the DVI-I port.  The workaround here to force DVI-D on a DVI-I computer is to use DVI-D cables only. 

In conclusion, it looks like the Avocent SwitchView DVI will be a desktop KVM switch that would be in use for quite some time.  No other previous KVM has the feature set or ability that this one has.  Aside from the expected slight analog signal shifts, the SwitchView DVI has been a do-it-all lab workhorse, and will be a valuable tool for any admin, power user, or enthusiast.  The next step up would be having some kind of affordable KVM over IP access...

Update:  I had difficulty with the split-output DVI-D/HDB15 setup with a test laptop using Intel 945GM integrated graphics.  Whenever I had to use the monitor, it did not properly detect it through the KVM, resulting in 1280x800 maximum resolution.  This was absolutely frustrating.  I then discovered that the KVM initially detects and stores the EDID information.  But with the splitter cable, it may not have done so during initialization.  The workaround here was to remove all power from the KVM, which includes any USB cables, connect only the HDB15 cable from the monitor using a DVI-I to HDB15 adapter, power up the KVM, making sure that the monitor is powered.  This way, the KVM reads and stores the EDID information through the HDB15.  Reconnecting all the cables including the output splitter can be done after a few seconds.  This hypothesis was tested, and proved to work the very first time!