Fun With Multiple Monitors and Computers

[pete]

I have a few computers at home, but I have two main ones: my i7-based desktop PC and an older Macintosh Macbook. I do almost everything on my PC, but I've been leaning toward using my Macbook for Internet browsing and downloading. Two reasons for this: Safari is very speedy on a Mac that runs 10.7 and I really don't have to worry that much about viruses.

I've got three 22" monitors. The Macbook has a video out cable that I've got connected to my far left monitor. The other two are connected to my PC. I wanted to control both my Mac and PC with one keyboard and mouse, but I can't really use a KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse -- more on this later). I also wanted to spend ... well, nothing. Here's what I did:

Note: you have one requirement beyond having (at least) two computers, two monitors, a keyboard and mouse: you need the computers to be on the same network. Wired, wireless, whatever. You could even do an Ad Hoc network, if you've got a Mac with a wireless card and your PC has a wireless card.

1. Download Synergy for both the Mac and PC.
2. Install the PC application. The Mac "application" just needs to be expanded and put in a folder that you can find it.
--> If you WANT to, you can follow Synergy's install instructions for the Mac. They're not hard, but do require you to do stuff as root. You may not have the right permissions.
3. Download and install QSynergy.

* On the Mac side, you'll be asked to find the Synergy files (i.e. the stuff in step 2).
* Note that the manual is incorrect for MacOS 10.7: go to the QSynergy menu to find preferences.
* Make sure you check the box to "Automatically start synergy when QSynergy starts" and OK it.

As mentioned, my "main" computer is my PC, so it'll be the Synergy server and use the mouse and keyboard connected to it. That means the Macintosh is the client. Make the appropriate selections in your software.

4. On the server, fire up QSynergy and click the box to "Use this computer to control others (be a server)."
5. Click the radio button for "Interactively configure synergy".
6. Click the button that says "Configure Server..."

This is where the magic happens. You can drag the little monitor icon from the top right corner to wherever the monitor your client computer is connected to. As I said, my Mac's connected to my far left monitor, so that's where I dragged the icon. You'll be asked to name the "monitor" icon. I named it what QSynergy said my Mac's name was (step 3).

7. OK everything. Don't click the Start button yet.
8. Figure out the name of your server. You've seen this a couple times when configuring Synergy. If all else fails, find your computer's IP address.
9. On the client, type in the name of the server.
10. On the server, hit start. On the client, hit start.
11. ???
12. Profit.

It took me longer to write this than to set it up. The other fun thing is that you can copy and paste text between the computers.

==================

I've gone one step further in all of this -- and this is why I can't use a KVM that's under a couple hundred $.

All my monitors support dual video input, VGA and HDMI. On my 3rd monitor, I have my Mac connected via HDMI and my PC connected via VGA. If I want to use all three monitors on my PC, I just have to press the "Video Input Select" button on the monitor. 'Course, I don't want to still be running Synergy because I could be typing stuff and clicking on stuff on my third monitor and those keystrokes and mouse swipes will be replicated on the Mac. That's not a good idea .

 

[Franklin Liao]

I am like you Pete. The only difference is that I am strictly a PC person, so for me, it's Android and Windows.

I currently run a 30" and a 24" monitor. Both of these are the type that you'd want to use for graphical work. I don't use KVM, so like you, my monitors all support dual video input, displayport, DVI-D, HDMI.

One of the reasons why I have my laptop a tablet PC is that I can use the stylus and finger gestures to interact with the thing, instead of pulling away form my keyboard and mouse. Doing this is very useful from a productivity standpoint as there are times when I not only require two screens to cross-reference back and forth, but a whole separate machine to run independent processes (as my main machine has aged to the point that I cannot realistically use virtual machine on it...)

My 'battle station' now consists of a laptop, the desktop with 2 monitors, and my phone. I've given some thought of further extending this to 2x 30", but space, costs and processing power required to drive this setup conspire against me...

 

[pete]

As my main work monitor (Apple Cinema Display 23") just died, I'm probably going to do the "use iPad as extra monitor/input device" thing, just as you describe and as I previously posted, over an ad hoc wireless connection. More specifically,

I will have a 24" Aluminium iMac (sadly, a relatively old one; Core2Duo-based) with one additional 23" display remote controlling both a Dell i7-based desktop with COrD AND a Dell i7-based laptop with Microsoft Remote Desktop. However, I'm thinking about using QSynergy to have either the desktop or laptop PC always display on the secondary monitor.

--> Aside: one extra fun thing about CoRD is that it allows you to use multiple monitors of different resolutions on the Mac. You can't do that with Microsoft Remote Desktop (you can on a PC, not on a Mac).

--> Aside 2: The reasons I have two Wintel machines and an iMac? The desktop is the machine I remote control other Wintel machines with and was the computer I did most of my daily work on. The laptop is solely for doing antimalware stuff with and has multiple virtual machines on. The iMac was used as a machine to remote control other Macs with and do some of the very challenging anti-malware stuff on. If I had to, I could give up the desktop. But I don't have to .

The stuff with Synergy/QSynergy and AirDisplay is extra kewl because it's cross-platform: Linux, Mac and PC.