Mouse and Keyboard Sharing

[innovatenate]

I just cracked open the box of a Mac Mini and installed F360. I've installed a free open-source, cross-platform keyboard and mouse sharing application, Synergy. This should allow me to use one mouse and keyboard for both my Windows desktop and my Mac Mini. It works wonderfully for web browsing. However, I have noticed a few behavioral issues with the keyboard/mouse that are especially problematic for running F360.

Has anyone successfully been any other cross-platform applications?

[lure23]

Synergy looks like an interesting thing (shares hw keyboard & mouse over multiple machines, running different OSes, right?)

Nope. I have been using VMWare Fusion (virtualization) and/or dual booting the Mini to Windows 7. I envision you need the setup for testing etc?

Frankly, dedicated keyboard & mouse might still be the best approach. Optimizing for Synergy glitches doesn't bring much added value for customers, since I doubt we would be having a similar setup.

[innovatenate]

That's right!

I have two desktops, one PC and one mac.... insert Justin Long and John Hodgman commercial. 😉 It is really helpful to be able to run side by side for me. To be clear, I wasn't inquiring on behalf of the development team. For purely selfish reasons, I'm inquiring to see if anyone else is using an application that works better.

Thanks for the response, I may have to go the remote control route! If I find something better, I'll be sure to post it here. 

Cheers,

[lure23]

Ok, interesting. You want to have the two dedicated monitors all the time. If not, have you tried VNC or other remote access solutions? I'd do that if I want dedicated hardware. However, you'd need to have one of the machines as the main one and fast network in between.

http://www.tightvnc.com

[kat.ingalls]

Thanks for chiming in, Asko! Nate, sorry you're having issues. I use my mac exclusively, sorry I can't be more help. Wondering if this might be good to move to our "Get Help" topic where our support guys may have run into something similar - thoughts?

Thanks!

Kat

[lure23]

It's not really help on Fusion that's needed here, so I think the forum is exactly the right one here.

[tom.finnigan]

Just a thought - if you only use fusion on one of the machines, try moving the mouse and keyboard to that machine, and share it with the other.  If you use fusion on both then it probably won't be too much help..

I've used a few different mouse and keyboard sharing setups in the past, and when I was doing it synergy was by far the most robust cross-platform solution. This was a while ago though.

I did a bit of googling and found a few recommendations for http://www.share-mouse.com/

AlternativeTo.net is also good for that kind of question: http://alternativeto.net/software/synergy/