Filed under: Macworld, Accessories, Mac mini
Hands on: Belkin Flip for Mac mini
Belkin has a huge booth here at Macworld (and I'll post an Engadget style booth tour later).%uFFFD I asked Burk Murray, director of Belkin product management, what I should look at since I am way too important to just wander around with the rest of the Macworld attendees and he said, without hesitation, 'The Flip for Mac mini,' which is a fancy pants KVM switcher designed for the Mac mini.
Laurie has been covering the Flip for awhile, and she will be writing up a review of it shortly, but let me tell you I was impressed with this thing. It has touch sensitive buttons on the front that let you access features like CD ejecting, volume, and switching video/audio. Thanks to some software you can also switch just the video, so if you are working on your Mac mini listening to some tunes and you want to use the Windows box that you have hooked up to the Flip you can do so without having to miss out on the song.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jeff Beck said 9:22PM on 1-11-2006
Yeah i got back from macworld today.
this was one of the items i toyed around with for a bit. my only concern was the resolution that it was using. might have been poor system settings, or the KVM
i'm hoping the system settings because it was horrid to look at. for pete's sake my iBook had a better looking display then the mini did through the Flip.
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Laurie said 10:08PM on 1-11-2006
Belkin sent me one that arrived just before I was leaving to come to San Francisco, so I'll be hooking it up and doing a full review when I return to New York. I did spend some time with Burk and also hands on with the Flip at the booth and it really is an impressive device. I didn't notice any real issues with video quality, but I don't recall what the resolution settings were at the time. The maximum resolution is 2048x1536 @65Hz.
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Jeff Beck said 12:09AM on 1-12-2006
It was probably just the macs that they rented. or so the man told me.
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Tice said 1:08AM on 1-12-2006
Looks like a plastic sandwhich - yuk!
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oliver said 3:49AM on 1-12-2006
That looks awful. They couldn't even make it the same colour as the Mac?
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Laurie said 1:29PM on 1-12-2006
I'll clarify Scott's picture... the thing on top of the Mac mini pictured is NOT part of the Flip. That's their FW/USB hub sitting on top. The thing on the bottom is the Flip :) The color is white, same finish as the mini.
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xnooby said 12:28AM on 1-21-2006
I bought one of these, and it randomly changes the volume level, and randomly switches between the PC and Mini. Total waste of money. Several other people on 123macmini.com have the same problem. Belkin has "never heard of" the problems. At least it looks great. I'd be happier if it simpluy didnt work, rather than be infuriating.
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Jay Gamel said 11:46PM on 1-24-2006
I bought one five days ago and it turns the volume off/on up/down and randomly switches between computers. It's junk and there's no help from Belkin. No phone help, of course, and only an auto-responsse to my e-mail saying they are experiencing "high volumes" of support requests. That's what you get when you sell crap.
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