Need recommendations on a cable solution

[Malon]

Hi all,

I work from home, and have both my personal PC and my work laptop connected to the same display, via two different connections: HDMI and VGA (the only video port on the laptop). I have a single keyboard, mouse, ethernet cable and speaker, which I manually disconnect and re-connect to each PC as needed.

My cables are starting to show signs of wear from the constant un-/replugging, and it's also a pain to have to muck around with cables every time I want to switch PCs, so I want to invest in a single-cable solution. I'm unsure of the best way to do this, though: a USB hub or a KVM switch.

A USB hub appears to be a cheaper option, but I can't find any at a reasonable price supporting USB, RJ45 and audio ports. My other choice is a KVM switch, which could be constantly connected to both PCs. Again, though, I'm struggling to find any that support all the ports that I need at any sort of decent price.

I probably don't need video on the hub/switch; as I mentioned, my laptop uses VGA and PC uses HDMI, so I just keep them both connected to the monitor at all times. I assume that a KVM switch can still function without the video port attached?

Comments and suggestions very welcome, I'm lost at sea here.

Any advice would be appreciated. Cheers.

[Chev]

I used to have the same situation. What I did was install VNC server on the work laptop and viewer on my home PC and then connect from there. That was a free solution but it does mean running both machines at the same time.