Multiple Monitors
dud...@gmail.com
Some time ago i am nearly sure we discussed running multiple monitors.
Maxivista was mentioned but there was also another product and i cant
remember what it was.
Can someone shed some light on this?
Many thanks
Garrett
Katy Whitton
dud...@gmail.com
desk and i'd like to get rid of two keyboards/mice.
Garrett
S. William Schulz
>
> Thats multiple monitors from the same workstation. I have 3 pc's on my
> desk and i'd like to get rid of two keyboards/mice.
I use synergy [1] which allows one to control multiple computers from
one keyboard, mouse. It also allows one to copy (via the clipboard)
data between the systems. Works with a mix of linux/Mac/Windows.
S
Chris Thompson
pastes between two machines.
At times I work from home my work laptop sits next to my LCD,
wireless, logged into the work VPN. I start synergy both places and
control my work laptop from my desktop Linux/Ubuntu box.
It feels EXACTLY like multiple monitors.
-C
--
------------------------
Chris Thompson
Gary Slinger
http://fredrik.hubbe.net/win2vnc.html
--
Gary K. Slinger
http://www.garyslinger.com
Tom D
machine.
http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/
It lets you have a task bar on the other monitors and to create
shortcuts that are tied to a specific monitor. You also get extra
buttons on each window to move it from monitor to monitor.
If you have multiple machines and you want to use a single keyboard and
mouse, I prefer synergy to a hardware KVM.
Gary Slinger
Mark Hurd
but at work I've got dual monitors on my main PC and another monitor on
a Sun terminal. Synergy works amazingly well.
The coolest use I've seen is in my friend's studio apartment - the TV
(running a Linux home theater media center PC) is visible from his
desk, so he can change channels, switch songs, and do everything else
his remote control can't do without needing to get up.
Mark
David Douthitt
> Win2VNC ?
> http://fredrik.hubbe.net/win2vnc.html
I second the recommendation of VNC. I don't know what Synergy and
Ultramon offer that VNC does not. VNC is available everywhere and for
every platform and it does *not* require X to run. In fact, the last
"platform" to be supported was a server for a locally running X server.
VNC is available in client and server versions for Windows, X, MacOS X,
Mac System 7 and up, and more. There are also client versions for
PalmOS. You don't even need a client for many of the servers: they
offer a Java client via the browser. What more could you ask for?
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VNC
My favorites are:
Windows: TightVNC - http://www.tightvnc.com/
MacOS X: OSXVNC - http://www.redstonesoftware.com/vnc.html
Palm: PalmVNC - http://www.btinternet.com/~harakan/PalmVNC/
S. William Schulz
>
> Gary Slinger wrote:
> > Win2VNC ?
> > http://fredrik.hubbe.net/win2vnc.html
>
> I second the recommendation of VNC. I don't know what Synergy and
> Ultramon offer that VNC does not. VNC is available everywhere and for
> every platform and it does *not* require X to run. In fact, the last
> "platform" to be supported was a server for a locally running X server.
I use VNC for many tasks as well, but typically when the computers are
at separate (or more widely separated) locations, e.g. getting on my
work machine from home, etc.
Synergy, OTOH, I use when the two machines are sitting side-by-side,
e.g. a laptop and a desktop machine, and I want to use both machines
(and both screens) as if they were two monitors plugged into the same
machine and thus sharing a keyboard and mouse.
SWS
Chris Thompson
The original request is for multiple computers each with monitors,
controlled from one central keyboard and mouse.
Assume I have two computers on my desk named 'chicken' and 'egg'.
To make matters simple, let's say they're both dells, running Windows
XP and each have a single LCD attached.
I put the LCD's side by side. chicken's on the left, egg's on the
right. On my desk I have a single keyboard and mouse, both connected
to chicken.
No keyboard or mouse is connected to egg. (Or, if there were, it's not
on the desk, it's sitting on the floor.)
If I am running Win2VNC on both machines, chicken as the server, egg
as a client, the software does something cool. On the right side of
chicken's screen is an invisible window, the height of the screen and
one pixel wide. You don't know it's there.
When I take the mouse and move it to the right, it hits that
invisible window which grabs hold of the mouse pointer and makes it
disappear. It intercepts all mouse and keyboard events and sends them,
over the vnc protocol, to egg. The win2vnc client on egg receives them
and pipes them to windows, so that the keyboard and mouse on chicken
are being realized on egg. The vnc protocol here is not transmitting
any video of egg's screen, only the mouse and keyboard events.
When you hit the left side of egg's screen, it returns control to
chicken, and the win2vnc process there releases the mouse and
keyboard.
This all happens so smoothly, it looks EXACTLY like a single computer
on two monitors.
The problem was, there were a ton of different versions depending on
what your two machines were. win2vnc was between two windows machines,
but there was win2x x2win x2x, win2osx, etc.
This was solved by the Synergy project, which unified the protocol and
allows you to do exactly the same as the win2vnc project above, but
using the same software on Windows/Mac/Linux/etc.
I have only used Synergy, so I have no idea whether win2vnc can do
this or not, but Synergy also supports cut and paste between machines.
I can cut a piece of text from a browser on my Linux box and paste it
into MS Word running under XP on my work laptop.
No solution supports dragging windows between machines. Though it is
technically possible, the authors call it too difficult to be
worthwhile.
VNC itself, however, really has nothing to do with this. VNC, RDP and
NX are remote display protocols that let you open a window on your
current machine to display the desktop of a second machine. It's
incredibly useful for administering remote servers, especially Windows
servers where you can't ssh to them.
VNC on chicken would display the desktop of egg, but it would do so in
a window on chicken's screen, and not on egg's screen.
So, using Synergy2, you solve the original question, which is multiple
machines, multiple monitors. There is no practical limit I know of to
how many machines can be strung together. And each machine can have
multiple monitors, so if chicken and egg each had dual monitors, I'd
have what appeared to be a four screen desktop across two machines.
Very Slick.
-c
On 1/16/06, David Douthitt <ss...@mailbag.com> wrote:
>
--
------------------------
Chris Thompson
James Hundley
S. William Schulz
> is there VNC for the palm that allows me to control the palm from my
> desktop?
You can actually go either way, i.e. control your desktop from your
palm/pocketpc, or as you asked, control your palm from your PC with
TapSmart's Handshare:
SWS
Gary Slinger
David Douthitt
> I think some people might be getting a little confused, so I'll try to clarify.
You did that quite admirably! Thanks....
> No solution supports dragging windows between machines. Though it is
> technically possible, the authors call it too difficult to be
> worthwhile.
I thought Ultramon did - but it's not free or open source....
VNC clients, as a general rule, support cut and paste between host and
remote client - in both directions.
> So, using Synergy2, you solve the original question, which is multiple
> machines, multiple monitors. There is no practical limit I know of to
> how many machines can be strung together. And each machine can have
> multiple monitors, so if chicken and egg each had dual monitors, I'd
> have what appeared to be a four screen desktop across two machines.
Sounds like an incredible waste of desktop space, to be honest. I've
one 15" CRT monitor on my desk and wish it wasn't there. And you have
two and are talking about *four*?
Chris Thompson
> > technically possible, the authors call it too difficult to be
> > worthwhile.
>
> I thought Ultramon did - but it's not free or open source....
I am fairly certain that Ultramon was merely an add on tool to make
working with one-computer-many-monitors easier. As such, it does
support dragging, but then, so does windows XP.
> VNC clients, as a general rule, support cut and paste between host and
> remote client - in both directions.
True enough, I just wasn't sure if Win2VNC leveraged this.
> > So, using Synergy2, you solve the original question, which is multiple
> > machines, multiple monitors. There is no practical limit I know of to
> > how many machines can be strung together. And each machine can have
> > multiple monitors, so if chicken and egg each had dual monitors, I'd
> > have what appeared to be a four screen desktop across two machines.
>
> Sounds like an incredible waste of desktop space, to be honest. I've
> one 15" CRT monitor on my desk and wish it wasn't there. And you have
> two and are talking about *four*?
You would be surprised. I use Synergy not for extra space, but because
my home workstation is Linux, my work laptop is XP. Only my work
laptop can connect to the VPN at work, so if I want to work from home,
I have to use the laptop. Using Synergy, I can do it at my
workstation, with my preferred keyboard and mouse. I can surf from
home, not over the work connection, etc.
In the dotcom days, I spent far too much time as a code monkey, with
two monitors, debugging websites. It's incredibly handy to have two
monitors, browser on one, terminals/editors in the other.
And there are people who need to see TONS of data at once. Financial
traders, for example, often decide trades by watching how different
indices play against each other. A little google found a picture of
just such a setup.
http://www.azuretrading.net/office/images/DSC00086.JPG
I have seen pictures of another setup, 24 19" LCD, four rows of six,
at a futures and derivatives house. It sounds crazy, but these guys
could see EVERYTHING at a glance. It makes a difference in a market
where a hesitation can move the market out of your range.
--
------------------------
Chris Thompson
S. William Schulz
> one 15" CRT monitor on my desk and wish it wasn't there. And you have
> two and are talking about *four*?
I look at many of the photos of GTD layouts, etc where folks have only
one monitor, and everything looks so clean, and I sometimes wish I had
that look... but then I start working, and I curse the fact that I
only have room for three monitors on my desk.... ah well.
Chris Lott
productive and non-productive ways to use multiple monitors (and
virtual desktops). If you just need more space so that you have
someplace to put your desktop icons or a longer taskbar for more
running programs and shortcuts, then that's probably not too
productive. But if you use the monitors to improve focus, minimize
distraction, enhance immediate connections to reference resources,
etc. then the "clutter" really isn't such at all.
My virtual workspace is much less cluttered with multiple monitors
than it was with just one because the mental clutter of showing,
hiding, switching, etc. was taking away from my concentration and
attention (not to mention temporal effects).
For reasons of efficiency (I travel and work from home so much), I
work mostly from my laptop. I've been looking for a way to use my two
monitors at work, though they are hooked to a different machine. Maybe
synergy can help with that... on its own, my laptop can't handle more
than one monitor...
c
S. William Schulz
>
> In a way, this is a lot like the clutter discussion. There are
> productive and non-productive ways to use multiple monitors (and
> virtual desktops). If you just need more space so that you have
> someplace to put your desktop icons or a longer taskbar for more
> running programs and shortcuts, then that's probably not too
> productive.
My computer desktops are blank (other than the wallpaper). I cannot
stand (personal preference) to have a bunch of icons on the desktop
(other than the occasional dropped link to a website, etc used as a
reminder). Even on my main work desktop (which used to have to run
Windows), I used an application to hide the icons unless and until I
needed them, at which time they were unhidden by moving the mouse to
one side of the screen.
> My virtual workspace is much less cluttered with multiple monitors
> than it was with just one because the mental clutter of showing,
> hiding, switching, etc. was taking away from my concentration and
> attention (not to mention temporal effects).
I agree. I get lost in the layers of windows, shells, etc which are
open, and it certainly breaks my concentration to have to go look for
them.
> For reasons of efficiency (I travel and work from home so much), I
> work mostly from my laptop. I've been looking for a way to use my two
> monitors at work, though they are hooked to a different machine. Maybe
> synergy can help with that... on its own, my laptop can't handle more
> than one monitor...
This is exactly why I started using Synergy. I would arrive at work,
plunk down my laptop, and then unless I synched applications and data
with the desktop, I would have to jump between keyboards, etc. Now
that I have synergy installed, I have a single keyboard and mouse
which controls both machines across the multiple available monitors.
S
Brian Carnell
also want to look at Multiplicity. I have written a short description
of it and the pros and cons of Multiplicty vs. Synergy here:
http://brian.carnell.com/archives/years/2006/01/000011.html
As for the productivity discussion, I've found that multiple monitors
and computers is a huge productivity boost.
For what I do -- video editing and production -- multiple workstations
is practically a must or otherwise you're idling an employee for hours
waiting for a rendering process to finish. Now *that* is highly
inefficient.
Second, its much better to have multiple computers at the same
workstation than try to create an alternative workstation. There are
also benefits similar to having multiple monitors on a single
workstation. For example, at home I use one computer/monitor for web
browsing and the second computer/monitor setup has the text app open
with the document I'm editing. The main difference compared to just one
computer with two monitors is that usually I'll have multiple
background process running on one of the computer as well where with a
single computer I'd probably not try to have as much going on.
I've used a three-monitor setup as well, and frankly I don't find the
multiple setup to be a distraction. In fact, it helps minimizes
distraction. Take the video editing example. If I have video rendering
going on the Mac and I'm at another workstation editing a document on
my PC, then typically I have to physically move to the Mac workstation
to see how far the rendering process has gotten. Having the monitor
right there, I can just turn the Mac monitor off, work on my document,
and then turn the Mac monitor on at predetermined limits (say every
hour) to make sure the process hasn't crashed and see how much longer
its going to take.
Unfortunately, I think this is something you really have to see to
realize just how amazing it can be. I tried to describe this to some
peoiple I work with and they were scratching their heads about what the
point was, but as soon as you see it in action, you grok it instantly.
If you rarely work with multiple applications on a single PC or have a
very large monitor this probably isn't for you. If you have two work
with multiple applications and are stuck on 19" or lower monitors, its
really a potential godsend.
Mitch Wagner
Here's some of the features I use:
- Taskbar on each monitor, either displaying all running programs or just the programs running on that particular monitor.
- Ultramon adds buttons to each window's titlebar, which, when pressed, will either expand the window to maximize across both monitors,
- or move a window from one monitor to the other.
- If the window isn't maximized before you move it, and you have two monitors with two different resolutions, Ultramon will automatically size the window to the appropriate size for the monitor it's on.
- Programmable hotkeys for a mess of stuff. Here's a handy one I just discovered: Dragging the mouse pointer from one monitor to another can be kind of slow, so I set up Ctrl-` as a hotkey to automatically move the mouse pointer to the other monitor it's on.
Ultramon is a very handy program for what it does ... but if you're looking to run multiple workstations, each with its own monitor, and control them with a single keyboard and mouse, then Ultramon ain't what you're looking for.
Mitch Wagner
TheOldGuy
I currently run three desktops from one keyboard, trackball, and
monitor using a KVM switch. The KVM switch provides input to the BIOS
so that the machines will boot without these peripherals attached to
each machine. Of course, I can't cut and paste from one machine to the
other using this setup. Synergy sounds interesting, allowing me to
cut/paste and otherwise move things easily from Linux to Windows and
back. Does Synergy somehow allow a computer to be booted without a
keyboard and monitor attached? I thought the keyboard, etc. check was
part of the POST process and would not be affected by software. I'm
not interested in having three keyboards, three trackballs, and three
monitors (although, if I had room it would be nice when using
Photoshop)? Also, is there a limit to the number of clients that can
be used per host? I might want to throw my laptop in the mix sometimes.
Thanks for your help.
Mando Escamilla
I keep an old crappy keyboard connected to my Synergy'd machine for this very reason.
The configuration on the server is pretty flexible, so you shouldn't have any problems connecting your laptop as you like.
--
Mando
S. William Schulz
> I'd recommend keeping the KVM connected to all 3 machines. If Synergy
> crashes (or more likely, your OS freaks out), you'll need some way to
> restart Synergy and with no keyboard or mouse physically connected to the
> machine, you're kinda SOL.
I agree with that... But if you're feeling lucky, you can turn off
the Halt on Keyboard, etc errors in your BIOS.
S
Matt Sweeney
problem. I'm extremely doubtful there's an alternative, but I figured
I'd ask anyways.
My current set up is a G5 desktop (home machine) and a Win2K laptop
(work machine). The Mac is the server, because it is more convienant.
(in other words, it doesn't have to be)
I can get everything working fine, except when I use the laptop to VPN
into my company's network. This makes total sense, of course.
I'm curious though, if there is an app like synergy that will allow me
to keep the connection, even when I'm using my VPN. Anyone know?
Matt
--
Matt Sweeney
mattws...@gmail.com
http://www.tsuibhne.net/
S. William Schulz
>
> So I finally got around to setting up synergy and I ran into one
> problem. I'm extremely doubtful there's an alternative, but I figured
> I'd ask anyways.
>
> My current set up is a G5 desktop (home machine) and a Win2K laptop
> (work machine). The Mac is the server, because it is more convienant.
> (in other words, it doesn't have to be)
>
> I can get everything working fine, except when I use the laptop to VPN
> into my company's network. This makes total sense, of course.
>
> I'm curious though, if there is an app like synergy that will allow me
> to keep the connection, even when I'm using my VPN. Anyone know?
This is more a function of the VPN configuration than anything to do
with Synergy. Most VPN clients are configured (Cisco, Watchguard,
etc) to disallow local network access when connected. This makes
sense from a security standpoint, but breaks connection Synergy needs
to operate.
Most clients do, however, have an option to allow local network
access, but many times changes to this setting are locked by IT
staff. If that is the case, you might try getting them to change it
for you.
S
Vicki Lee Maddox
saw that Target now has a small display of man bags. They had 3
different styles and I believe they were under $20. For those of you
wanting to test the waters with a man bag, this might be a way.
Other Target news, I did purchase one of the their Real Simple cases
to hold all my frequent shopper cards and so far I'm happy with
it. The cards can be scanned through the plastic, which means I
don't have to take them out of the case and with the swivel post,
it's easy to find the right card.
Best,
Vicki Lee
Mike De Bruyn
> I was in Target today looking for a wallet and in the men's area I
> saw that Target now has a small display of man bags.
I heard them referred to as a "murse" somewhere. I don't know why
that strikes me as so funny ;-)
> They had 3
> different styles and I believe they were under $20. For those of you
> wanting to test the waters with a man bag, this might be a way.
> Other Target news, I did purchase one of the their Real Simple cases
Is that what Target calls them? I'm going to check them out.
> to hold all my frequent shopper cards and so far I'm happy with
> it. The cards can be scanned through the plastic, which means I
> don't have to take them out of the case and with the swivel post,
> it's easy to find the right card.
--
Cheers,
Mike
Matt Sweeney
>
>
> This is more a function of the VPN configuration than anything to do
> with Synergy. Most VPN clients are configured (Cisco, Watchguard,
> etc) to disallow local network access when connected. This makes
> sense from a security standpoint, but breaks connection Synergy needs
> to operate.
>
Figured. Oh well.
Simon Carr
http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/security.html
simon...@gmail.com