Microsoft have released a great little app for users us with multiple PCs. The addin comes from a Garage project at Microsoft which is a program designed to encourage incubations of ideas and projects.
With the application it treats all your Windows PCs as if they were one single desktop, so if you have two machines side by site (as I do at work) you can use the mouse as though they were one PC including dragging files between them. It’s a great idea and if you have a dedicated Media Center machine connected to your TV as well a laptop it would be a great way of controlling it from one place.
Mouse Without Borders is a project I’ve been familiar with for the last 6 months or so and it’s a wonderfully useful tool. In a nutshell, it allows you to reach across your PC’s as if they were part of one single desktop. I have two PC’s on my desk at work connected to 3 LCD screens and using Mouse Without Borders I can move my mouse between the 3 screens, even though one of them is attached to a different PC from the other two. What’s more, I can move files between the 2 computers simply by dragging them from one desktop to another. In fact you can control up to four computers from a single mouse and keyboard with no extra hardware needed – it’s all software magic, developed by Truong Do who by day is a developed for Microsoft Dynamics. The software is easy to setup and in addition to enabling drag and drop of files, you can lock or log in to all PCs from one PC, and as a whimsical bonus is it allows you to customize your Windows logo screen with the daily image from Bing or a local collection of pictures 🙂 I regularly use it to have one PC dedicated to social media streams while I work away on my other PC connected to two screens.
12 thoughts on “Control all your PCs from one mouse and keyboard with Microsoft’s new app”
seems a lot like http://synergy-foss.org/ which has been out for years.
not sure you can drag from one pc to another with synergy, but it does work across windows, mac and linux.
I would have to disagree. While I love synergy, use it a lot, and feel that it is easy FOR ME (a relatively experienced user) to implement, it’s not really a ready-to-go out of the box solution that the average user can set up and implement (e.g. take a look at http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/configuration.html).
i use synergy to control my pc with my mac, which is pretty sweet. the one benefit of this app is you can drag files between pcs, but i’ve never had to do that with my mac and pc…
While I have been a synergy user for years, this interests me for the convenience of drag and drop file transfer – something synergy unfortunately lacks.
That’s what I was thinking! It’s not a novel idea but it has a few new features that make it appealing. Logon and lock with one keyboard is pretty cool too.
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seems a lot like http://synergy-foss.org/ which has been out for years.
not sure you can drag from one pc to another with synergy, but it does work across windows, mac and linux.
I agree but it seems a lot easier to set up in a Windows Environment than synergy – works exceptionally well
This is just like input Director
http://www.inputdirector.com/
synergy has been around for about 8 years and is a piece of cake to implement.
I would have to disagree. While I love synergy, use it a lot, and feel that it is easy FOR ME (a relatively experienced user) to implement, it’s not really a ready-to-go out of the box solution that the average user can set up and implement (e.g. take a look at http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/configuration.html).
It’s configuration is designed by an engineer. Enough said really.
i use synergy to control my pc with my mac, which is pretty sweet. the one benefit of this app is you can drag files between pcs, but i’ve never had to do that with my mac and pc…
While I have been a synergy user for years, this interests me for the convenience of drag and drop file transfer – something synergy unfortunately lacks.
They also provide a GUI for windows: http://www.dusanvuckovic.com/tutorials-2/interoperability/multiple-computers-with-one-keyboard-and-mouse-synergy/
And on MAC and linux: http://code.google.com/p/quicksynergy/
Why rewrite an entire application instead of just adding the file swap on to synergy?
That’s what I was thinking! It’s not a novel idea but it has a few new features that make it appealing. Logon and lock with one keyboard is pretty cool too.
Mouse Without Borders is ONLY good if you are in a completely homogeneous Windows environment. Heterogeneous environments are completely excluded.