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Synergy Plus

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DocSavage:
I have used Synergy for several years. I am now running the latest Synergy Plus revision. Ordinarily I have 3 computers running, dual monitors on each, and sometimes one of my laptops. I can keep my development machine free of widgets and gadgets while running continuos weather monitor on different computer and eMail/messaging on a third. Just mousing past the screen edge of my primary machine puts me over on the eMail machine, type a quick response & mouse back to the work machine. Or set the big guy to render something & mouse over to another machine while primary is busy.
I am a fan of Synergy in all its versions & glad to see it discussed on DC, my other "gotta' have it" resource.

kamahl:
I'd been using Synergy for about 5 years, and switched to Synergy plus back in march.  However a couple months ago I switched to a nice program called Input Director http://www.inputdirector.com/.  I have two major reasons to prefer it over Synergy.

1. Works better when I'm playing games.
How many people have opened a FPS only to find the mouse flying across the screen? Synergy has an aversion to certain DirectX APIs, which Input Director seems to work better with.

2. Switching between hosts. 
I have three machines I use with my synergy setup: Main Desktop, secondary desktop, netbook.  Given that the secondary desktop doesn't have any HID devices attached, changing the synergyc target is somewhat awkward. 
Input Director works Server -> Client, rather than the Client -> Server setup that synergy uses.  That means all I need to do to change hosts is click the "Enable as Master" button on my desktop, and "Enable as Slave" on the netbook. the Secondary doesn't care who the master is, as long as the master can ping it.

Has anyone else tried this alternative, and what are your opinions about it?

Deozaan:
I gave Synergy+ a try and it was working for a while but broke when I selected the option to run when my account logged in.

It must have been starting a (hidden) service, but it would never connect, and when I tried to manually start the program on both PCs, they wouldn't ever connect.

So. . .

Synergy--;  // (Uninstalled)

CmputrAce:
What Synergy2 and its derivatives have lacked is a two-layer approach to handling the mouse inputs like Multiplicity (Stardock). Because of this, if you install Synergy2/Synergy+ as a user, it will only accept input when you are running user-mode programs. When you switch to admin-mode programs, it will not accept input until you switch back to user-mode.

If you install Synergy2/Synergy+ in admin mode, it will only accept input when you are working on admin-mode programs. Whichever window has focus determines which "mode" you are in.

The proper solution for Synergy2/Synergy+ to run as desired in Windows Vista / 7 is to have two service apps, one for user-mode input and one for admin-mode input. This is fairly well documented in MS development documentation and various developer forums, but it's a pain to implement.

A potential road block to this development approach is that the Synergys are coded to work across OSes as well as computers, and OS X / Linux don't have the same execution model as Windows.

The whole reason I use Synergy instead of my licensed Multiplicity Pro is that I have Windows PCs and a MacBook Pro (running OS X sometimes and Win 7 sometimes) that I share my KB/Mouse with. Multiplicity does not come with an OS X client/server. When I run Win & on the Mac, I deal with the few times I run admin-mode programs by typing on the Mac keyboard. It's a pain, but it works.

Deozaan:
If you install Synergy2/Synergy+ in admin mode, it will only accept input when you are working on admin-mode programs. Whichever window has focus determines which "mode" you are in.-CmputrAce (July 16, 2010, 09:30 AM)
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That may be what broke it for me. To get it to run as a service when my computer turned on I had to run it as administrator.

I couldn't even get the mouse to go over to the other PC after that.

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