Monday, August 6, 2007

Awesome tool for sharing keyboard+mouse

Erik told me about an open source project called Synergy that allows you to share a keyboard and mouse over any network connection. I originally tried it out at home, where I have a Mac G5 and a Windows XP machine. Both machines have their own monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Synergy ended up working awesome for this setup because I

  1. got to clear off some desk space now that I only needed one keyboard/mouse setup and

  2. allow me to be way more efficient when working because I started using them almost as one machine.

In addition to sharing a keyboard and mouse Synergy also lets you share a clipboard! This makes coding on one machine while doing searches/research on the other super-efficient. Overall it's a super useful tool... for free!