Synergy
I recently got setup at home with three identical monitors as I work from home often. Here's a picture of them. The left-most monitor is my main monitor for my work laptop. I extend that desktop to the middle monitor. The right-most monitor is for my home computer. For productivity and neatness reasons, I wanted to use only one mouse and one keyboard for both my work laptop and my home computer.
There are many tools out there that allow you to use one keyboard and one mouse with multiple computers, but most of them require special hardware and aren't free. It was recommended that I try Synergy, since it was free and only required software to be installed. I wasn't sure if it would work when I was VPN'ed into work as it doesn't work across my husband's work VPN, but I gave it a try anyway. Luckily it worked great for me. By adding four links to the server, I'm able to move the mouse 360 degrees in either direction. There is a very short delay when moving the mouse between computers, however it is not noticeable to me.
If you are using multiple computers with different monitors and don't already have a solution to the one keyboard and one mouse problem, then I'd highly recommend using Synergy.
Legacy Comments
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Michael Kizer
2008-12-29 |
re: Synergy Synergy works really well for controlling multiple computers with one keyboard/mouse, but for my situation I had to find a different solution. I have two computers at work, but one of them is on an isolated network so Synergy wouldn't work. I found a solution called VCC-300 (http://osblend.com) that creates a local network connection over a USB cable. It functions in a similar manner to Synergy, but adds a few other nice features (drag & drop files from one computer to the other and share a single internet connection if you need to). The only issues with VCC-300 is that it requires a hardware dongle to connect the two computers via USB, only works with two computers, and it isn't free. But it does work well. I have to use the same setup at home since one of my VPN connections blocks all other network activity. Luckily, it doesn't interfere with VCC-300. If you find that you can't use Synergy, I'd recommend giving VCC-300 a try. |
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anon
2009-02-06 |
re: Synergy you can do the same with synergy and a 2way usb cable (sets up a network like a reversed ethernet cable) |