I have to gush a little bit because for my 29th birthday my lovely wife bought me a 22″ Widescreen monitor that matches the one I already own. I love working with dual screens when doing everything from programming to just surfing the net because I can leave my communication tools open on one screen while I work on another.
I’m trying to keep my office clutter free so I don’t really want to have multiple keyboards or a KVM switch or anything like that cluttering my crowded desk.
Enter Synergy.
Synergy (http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/) is, for lack of a better word, awesome. It lets a user utilize 1 keyboard, 2 operating systems on different machines, and 2 monitors that can share the keyboard and mouse resources!
I was a little worried about the lag when sharing the mouse with the remote computer, but it’s almost unnoticeable. I can now use my single keyboard and mouse and have my OS X open on the left monitor with Windows XP open on the right one. I really get the best of both worlds.
The configuration takes a little bit to get going. My only recommendation is that you remember to add the “.local” to the end of your Apple’s computer name. For example, myosx.local instead of just myosx.
It’s great and I’m really enjoying using it. I highly recommend this tool if you’ve got a similar setup!
Leave a Reply