Comments on: Synergy shares keyboard and mouse across multiple systems

By: Simon

Simon — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:27:16 +0000

Synergy does only a fraction of what MaxiVista does. It is like comparing apples with pies.

The main feature of MaxiVista is sharing of monitors not just remote controlling. MaxiVista does that as a side dish.

Simon

By: Chip

Chip — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:56:13 +0000

I haven’t tried MaxiVista yet, but it looks like XP is supported. As you alluded, they don’t support Vista x64 yet, and even Vista 32-bit seems to have a lot of limitations.

By: brett701

brett701 — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 03:35:12 +0000

i have dual monitors, but id like to use other laptops to work as extended monitors to my main setup. Maxivista is used for this. Anyone have any experience? however, im not able to use it bc / i have vista 64 bit. sucks alot bc/ id rather have XP , but finding the drivers for xp would be a huge headache.

By: Chip

Chip — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:25:27 +0000

The leftmost monitor is connect to the laptop as a second monitor. The other two monitors are on two separate systems. Synergy communicates with those systems over the local network to control them from the laptop.

By: luis barrios

luis barrios — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:27:42 +0000

Can you tell me about the hardware connections, of the three monitors, please.

By: Cyril

Cyril — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 12:52:34 +0000

Maybe is there some os x users. If you have a similar layout but based on apple systems, perhaps would you like to give a look a telelport. It is similar to synergy, but works only with os x. Besides, it allows you to move windows to an other screen of a different computer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleport_(software)

Personally, I have a couple of workstation and a notebook, all of those running linux, and I use teleport since a while, it is sooo cool to use only one keyboard/mous set.

By: Chip

Chip — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:22:16 +0000

USB instead of TCP/IP isn’t a bad idea at all, especially from a security perspective. Fortunately, my LAN is behind a locked down firewall device.

By: Chip

Chip — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:18:56 +0000

As far as I can tell, rdesktop only provides a remote Windows desktop on a *nix client, rather than sharing input devices across different systems that use different monitors.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:39:25 +0000

Synergy is great and I use it at home all the time. if you notice any keyboard glitches I usually just go back between screens and it fixes it.

Just be aware that it does not require any authentication and uses no encryption so all key strokes, including passwords, get broadcasted over your network. Fine for me on my home network but I do see how it could be a security concern. You can set it up with ssh to tunnel the computers together, though I haven’t tried it

There are a few commercial options which offer more security even if they do require a connection cable.

here is one example.
http://www.clixon.co.kr/eng/sub01.php

By: atc

atc — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:38:22 +0000

It’s called rdesktop :)

By: Chip

Chip — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:28:41 +0000

Thanks for the input, Tyler. As noted in the post above, I saw a few keyboard glitches myself in Synergy.

Maybe they haven’t updated since 2006 because they think they’re done?

By: Tyler Style

Tyler Style — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:19:55 +0000

Synergy is OK, but I find that if you run it long enough (on two XP machines), it starts failing to transmit keyboard stroke like CTRL combos or tabs.

For pure Windows setups, I definitely would go with Input Director! Synergy for multi-OS setups (tho I tend to use VMs for that myself)

Also, Synergy development has been abandoned (last release 05/2006), while Input Director is still being actively updated (last release 09/2008).

Just my two cents!