Software In The Shack At VE3MPG

Once in a while I come across some very unique software for use in my radio shack’s computers. Synergy+ is that software. It shares a common mouse and keyboard if you’re using several computers and operating systems. I use 3 systems in the shack – a kinda new Windows 7 Home Premium box, an older Pentium 4 running Windows XP Pro and sometimes my laptop gets included in the mix. Normally that would be a lot of wires and keyboards to have on the desk where real estate can become scarce. From my main computer display (Win7 – the server in Synergy+) I can access the screens of the other 2 systems by floating my mouse over to the right side of my main monitor and the mouse appears on my P4 system and my keyboard becomes part of the P4 system. I can configure Synergy+ so that the left side of the screen in the Win7 (server) system transfers my mouse pointer to the laptop display and my keyboard becomes the laptop input keyboard. Keyboard input goes to the same screen that your mouse cursor is on.

You might ask what is so special about this? It’s done over my home wireless network with absolutely no lag time and no KVM switch. The Synergy+ software can be made to run as a service on boot up so you can even log in to other computers at the login prompt. Now I only have one mouse and one keyboard available without all of the extra wires and separate connections to various monitors required of a KVM switch. It’s a bit tricky to set up initially but after a few minutes and reading the wiki at the Synergy+ site I was up and running. There’s also an excellent discussion group available.

Synergy+ works with different resolutions – my main box running Windows 7 runs at 1680 x 1050; the P4 at 1280 x 800 and the laptop at 1024 x 768. I can still use multiple monitors on my Win7 box too.

Synergy+ is available for Linux 32 and 64 bit and Windows 32 and 64 bit versions, and Mac OS X.

Here’s the link to the Synergy+ website - >>What is Synergy+?