For years, I have been using more than one computer at a time. One for my normal daily use and one to handle my photo-editing and similar heavy use programs. Like most users, I used a KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) switch to be able to use 1 keyboard, mouse and monitor between both computers. For the most part, this worked out well. The first KVM switch I had used the old PS2 ports and just plain wore out, then I got one that utilized USB ports and included audio for the speakers. That was a great improvement, but still cost me a decent amount of money.
About a year ago, my brother introduced me to a program called Synergy. I looked at it a couple of times, but never really thought about using it as my KVM switch was working fine. Now that being said, please understand that Synergy is not a KVM switch. It has no physical properties itself and its only software. Software you might say? Yes, its software and the best part is they have a free version (no longer available) and a commercial version. The difference between the two is that the commercial version is just more refined and a little more stable, but using the free version is great. Don’t think you will see much of a difference, but at the time I still was not really using it, it was just kind of cool to see.
Fast forward a few months and the KVM switch I had fried and no longer works. One of the things I did not like about using the KVM switch is that I had a hot-key on the keyboard that allowed me to switch between both computers, but I could only be on one at a time. Kind of a drag, now that my KVM fried, I was stuck, what was I going to do. I though about it and looked around my office, and what do I see, a couple of unused monitors, so that gets me to thinking, maybe its time to try out Synergy. By having Synergy on my computers, I am able to share just 1 keyboard and mouse between them and move between screen/computers with just the glide of a mouse.
But, remember, this is a software no a hardware, so how does it work? Well, its very simple, you still only need 1 keyboard and mouse, but you do need more than one monitor. This is great for those that have monitors doing nothing or like to have a command center look in their office. The other requirements are that your computers are connected via a network, whether wired or wireless Ethernet and you have the Synergy software.
Now that you have these things, its time to get started. What you are going to be doing is installing this software on your computers and setting up the monitors they way you want them. While you look at the picture above, you might be thinking this is just one computer with several monitors, that is not correct. In this case, there are three separate computers and they operate independently of each other, expect for the Synergy software. From what I can see with the software you can setup one “server” and 14 “client computers”.
In my office, I use it on my main computer and then have it installed on my other computer for my photo editing, etc. I also use it on a monitor that I have that I hook up to computers that I am working on, that way I don’t have to go over to the machine and I can just look across my other desk and be able to work on it using my main keyboard and mouse. This is a great option. My brother at his work station has 3 computers attached to 4 monitors. 2 monitors are attached to one computer that is setup for multi-monitors and the remaining 2 are each attached to their own machine. Just sliding the mouse around to the location of the monitor, you set it up in the server portion of the software, your mouse and keyboard jump to that other machine for you to use.
If you look at the photo to the right, you will see how my system is setup. The computer shown in the center is my server computer. My second computer is listed exactly to the left of this machine. In my setup, when I move my mouse all the way to the left of the main monitor, it jumps to the next monitor and computer and I can start working on it there.
Again, this is a great option if you have more than one computer to run and have some extra monitors handy.