Synergy syncs two computers simplyFirst INQpressions The power of SynergyBy Liam Proven: Thursday 16 August 2007, 16:00Click here to find out more!Product: SynergyWebsite: SynergySystem requirements: multiple adjacent GUI computers running Windows, Mac OS X or Unix, a TCP/IP networkPrice: freeSYNERGY is a simple, elegant answer to a problem that for many techies is so obvious and familiar they've forgotten it's a problem: how do you cope with needing to use multiple different computers on a regular basis?I don't mean dotted around one's workplace, but sitting on the desk in front of you. You only have one pair of hands and eyes (well, unless you're unusually gifted, in which case, get in touch, we'd like to run a photo-feature). So what do you do if you have two or three computers on your desk?If you're working on the cheap, you just put them side-by-side. Two screens, two keyboards, two mice. Maybe more than two: my main PC and my Mac both have twin 17" screens, so I have no less than four 17-inch CRTs on the table - and the little 14" mono screen of my server, too. It's a lot of glass.The old-fashioned answer to this is a KVM - a Keyboard-Video-Mouse switch. Press a button or a key combination or for retro types turn a switch and a single set of monitor, keyboard and rodent can be connected to multiple computers. It's conceptually simple - you just pick which system you're communicating with at a given time.There are a whole load of snags with the KVM approach, though. You can't keep an eye on what's happening on more than one system at a time, for instance. The switches also tend to degrade the picture quality on the screen, so you can't use really high resolutions. KVMs don't tend to play well with multi-head machines, either, and you can't use them with a notebook's integral display.Another way is some kind of remote-control app, like VNC. You can open one machine's display as a window within another, or even run it full-screen - but if you do that, you now can't get at your own local desktop, and if you run it less than full-screen, you either work in a little postbox-sized view or you lose a big oblong of your precious screen area. Nifty for remote monitoring, less so for a machine that's next to you.This is where Synergy comes in. It's a little open-source app which runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Here's how it works: you install Synergy on all the machines on your desk. The one you use most - that's on all the time, or that has the keyboard and mouse you like best - is designated the "server". The copies of Synergy on the other computers communicate with this "master" machine. You tell Synergy which machines are on the left and right of each other - or even above or below one another.The Windows version has a built-in GUI to do this; on Linux and Mac OS X, it's a console mode tool with a config file. However, there are free GUIs for Linux and Macs available. Both the app and the GUI are in the standard Ubuntu repositories, for instance.In use, it's invisible. You just move the mouse pointer to the edge of the screen on one machine - and it appears on the next computer over. Now you're using the server's mouse and keyboard to control the client machine. You can move windows around, type, use command keys, whatever you like. To switch back, just mouse back over to the server. It's as if all the different machines shared one big monitor.It's that simple. There are no switches, no buttons, no control keys or magic keystrokes. All the displays are active all the time, so while you're working on one machine, you can glance over at the one next to it and monitor what it's doing. Synergy synchronises the screensavers on all the machines, too, and you can cut-and-paste text between different machines.They're still separate computers. You can't drag a window from one to another, or resize a window to span two different machines. Each remains itself, running its own software. This isn't a replacement for multiple monitors - but it works fine with existing multi-head systems.True, there are commercial equivalents to Synergy, such as MaxiVista and Stardock's Multiplicity, but they're currently Windows-only. (The companies say they're working on it.) The paid-for ones offer handy additional features such as file transfer, password-locking and so on. There are also VNC-based equivalents (x2vnc, Win2VNC, x2x) and if you're a guru with the X Window System you can do this on an array of Unix boxes with no extra tools.In shortSynergy lets you turn a bunch of adjacent computers with their own screens into a single big desktop, controlled by a single keyboard and mouse. In use, it's invisible. It requires no extra hardware or software, it's easy to set up, has a simple GUI, is completely cross-platform, and it costs nothing. What more do you need?
