Alex Hopmann’s Blog

I tend to have a lot of computers around. I tend to prefer working with lots of big monitors and different computers to deal with different tasks all over. On my desk I have 3 monitors (two 20″ and one 30″), an old computer that is typically open on email, my main development workstation that is doing all sorts of stuff and a few other computers doing misc things (servers, machines I’m setting up for other tasks, test machines, etc).

Clutter is not a new thing in my life, but I’m trying to simplify my desk a little bit. I’ve moved the computers out from under the desk by buying a few USB extension cables and some nice 15′ DVI cables so the computers can all be out of the way but still be hooked up. I also needed some extension cables for my speakers (a 5.1 system which are currently attached through 3 pMix “personal audio mixer” devices that lets me attach them to 3 computers at a time).

Having multiple keyboards around has become a pain so I’m trying out Synergy which is a free tool that lets me use one keyboard/mouse across multiple computers. This is not the same thing as a KVM switch since it doesn’t switch the video- all the machines are hooked up to their own displays, just the mouse moves between them. I just installed it so no reports on its reliability yet. I did hit a glitch where it kept reporting that my “server” machine was rejecting the connections of the client one- changing to a different port solved this problem. I think I might have been accidentally running two instances of the synergy process, with one of them incorrectly configured. I also haven’t tried hooking my Mac into the setup yet, but I’m looking forward to it.