Cool Utility

Posted by Phil Weber on December 30, 2005

Scott Hanselman swears by MaxiVista (they even have his face on their home page!), a utility that allows you to use a networked PC (typically a laptop) as a second monitor. But what if you want to actually work on both PCs? I suppose you could Remote Desktop from your primary PC to the second, then use MaxiVista to drag the RD session over to the second PC’s monitor (think about that for a second!) Here’s a better solution...

By way of Ofer Achler, I have discovered Synergy, an open-source utility that lets you share your keyboard and mouse with a networked machine. Simply move your mouse pointer off the edge of one screen, and it instantly appears on the other; keyboard and mouse events are sent to that device. It even merges the clipboards of all connected PCs (or Macs; Synergy is cross-platform), so you may copy and paste among them.

Very cool free utility; highly recommended. Now, if they’d just put my face on their home page...


Comments

Posted by Kelly on February 21, 2006:

omg…I JUST saw that at my friends office!! She works in graphics at the NYTimes with special software on an apple and she was excited to show me her new toy feature…the mouse jumped from one computer to the other. I’m just excited that I actually know what you are talking about in geek world! :)


Leave a comment