Philocast Video Short: Using Synergy to control multiple PCs and OSes

17 Nov 2007

If you haven’t used Synergy yet you are really missing out. I apologize for the video being a little bit dark, but you can definitely see the tool in use and the benefit. I have four computers I use here not including my laptop.

Windows XP SP2 w/ Dual 20″ LCDs
Windows Server 2003 w/ Single 15″ LCD
Windows XP SP2 w/Shared 19″ LCD
Fedora 7 w/Shared 19″ LCD

As you can imagine, navigating three keyboards and mice across four computers can be a pain. I don’t concentrate on the second XP computer because I don’t use it much. So I have configured the main XP machine as the Synergy server, and the 2k3 server and the Fedora box as clients. I have set the top of the XP box to go to the bottom of the 2K3 server and the right of the XP box to go to the Fedora box. If you watch the video you can see that I can control them seamlessly and also share a clipboard between them.

I am sure I don’t have to tell you how absolutely handy this is. Work freely amongst PCs of Windows, Linux or MacOS X with Synergy.

I hope you enjoyed my first video segment, I look forward to providing them somewhat regularly.

Update: Since the video is so dark, here is a photo so you can see the setup more clearly.