Tech Blog

[#1]

Yeah in my last post I talked about having three screens for my MBP. How about Four screens and two machines! Thanks to my friend Catherine Winters I think I have some real motivation to clean out my closet!

Have an extra machine kicking around? Maybe not enough room for the whole set up but you have a place for the box and the monitor. Yeah, well you can have the full "I'm pushing this geekdom to an 11" feeling with Synergy +. Yeah check this out. One keyboard and mouse not only controlling machines…but controlling all at once and with copy-paste between them.

I thought that would get your attention.

I'm thinking the old Dell in my closet with an aging copy of XP would be great with Ubuntu. Now I could just get it going, then remove the keyboard and mouse and use it as a slave computer for news to tick by or Twitter or …. just because I can.

And if that isn't what being a geek is all about, I don't know what is.

[#2]

There's a version of this app called QuickSynergy in the standard Ubuntu repositories.

I've been using it very happily for the last couple of weeks. I have my laptop sitting in the middle of my desk with my desktop PC's keyboard/mouse in the keyboard tray and my desktop monitor behind the laptop. Given my seating position, the top of my laptop screen appears just below the bottom of my desktop monitor. With QuickSynergy running in server mode on the desktop and client mode on the laptop the mouse can just "fall off" the bottom of my desktop monitor and appears at the top of the laptop screen.

It's so freaking simple and so good for productivity - and of course totally free. I love it. Posting this comment from my laptop but typed on my desktop keyboard.

There's a version of QuickSynergy available for OSX too so you shouldn't have any problems setting this up.

[#3]

Jon, you and Catherine have been conspiring with Sheila to clean out my closet haven't you? Cause right now a stable surface for a monitor is all that stands between me and total computer emersion....

[#4]

Conspiring with Catherine maybe but I suspect Sheila would rather have all those ugly old boxes kept hidden in the closet. Unless she's running out of room for shoes of course...

PS Don't forget that these tools are sending your keystrokes, unencrypted, from one machine to another. Best not to run them on an open wireless connection (although if you're taking two or three computers to a coffee shop then you've got bigger problems)

[#5]

Great and inspiring topic Tris! I've just connected my little JoliCloud eeePC8G to my win7 desktop box by using QuickSynergy and Synergy+

And here I thought my little netbook would soon languish.

[#6]

@bgrier - so the different synergy forks will cross-communicate. Interesting.

[#7]

@Jon Jennings: yep, and I was somewhat suprised too! But since it seemed a protocol level thing, all using TCP/IP and a specific port  I thought I'd give it a try