Multiple PCs? Check out Multiplicity

Been a fan of desktop customization software for some time, especially that produced by a company called Stardock. They produce a wide variety of tools to change the look and operation of your desktop, all of it falls under the Object Desktop brand. Recently they introduced a new tool called Multiplicity, this product is a departure from Stardocks previous tool sets as it does not help you with desktop customization. Instead, this tool allows you to use a single mouse and keyboard across multiple PCs.

Initially this may sound like a me to product, sure, many people know of PC Anywhere or the popular and free VNC. This tool however differs from these others, you use it to control other computers at your desk that have their own displays. It works kinda like having multiple monitors on your PC, when you move the mouse around, it jumps from one monitor to another. Multiplicity does the same thing with your computers, you set it up so that when the mouse moves off the edge of one screen, it appears on the monitor of your other PC.

Not only can this be very useful if you have more than one PC at your desk, but it can also be really handy for laptops. This is where I really experienced how useful this tool could be. Often I bring my laptop to the office, however when ever I want to use it, I move away from my desktop computers keyboard / mouse and use the laptops track pad and keyboard. Not a big deal, but it is a little cumbersome. Things get a little more complicated when I want to tranfer a small piece of information like an URL, image, etc. Typically I'd email these things to myself or transfer them over the corporate network. Either way it was slow and clumsy.

With Multiplicity, I can sit at my desktop system, simply move my mouse of the edge of one screen and voila, I'm now controlling my laptop. Now, I need to copy some text from a webpage, no problem, copy it to the clipboard on my laptop, move the mouse back to my desktop system and paste away. The simplicity of this software is what really makes it work so well. If you are running multiple computers at your desk, this may be what you need. Check it out at www.multiplicity.net for more details.