Most computer Geeks have at least two computers. For the vast majority of us, that means a desktop and a laptop.

I am a man that appreciates good periferals, I have a nice logitech keyboard, and the best mouse that they currently offer, so when I am forced to use my laptop's little chicklet keyboard, and horrible touchpad it physically pains me. The trouble is, I frequently need to use both at the same time if only just for the additional screen real estate.

That's where synergy comes in. Synergy allows you to use your keyboard and mouse from one computer or "server" on multiple other computers or "clients". I have my desktop setup as the server and my laptop setup as a client.

What this allows me to do is pretty sweet, I set my laptop to be the computer to the left of my desktop's monitor, so when I move my mouse to the left of the screen, it just appears on my laptop's screen, as if they were two monitors on the same computer. Not only does this let me use my good peripherals, it's also much faster than constantly switching back and forth between the two. This works on windows, mac, and linux, and all operating systems can operate as a client or a server.

I am using my ubuntu computer as the server using the package "QuickSynergy". Setup is fairly straight forward, once installed, it's located in Applications > Accessories > QuickSynergy. In the Use tab, set the server as "localhost", and click execute.

Now to attach a client, we just have to download the software from the Synergy souceforge page. Once installed, we just have to tell it what screen we want it to be, and where the server is. When you start Synergy, the first thing we need to do is put in the IP address for the server, in my case it's 192.168.1.101. Then click Advanced, set the screen name to where you want the monitor to be in relation to the server's screen (Left, Right, Top, Bottom). Click ok, then Start on the main window. It should be up and working! You can even set synergy to start automatically so that you don't have to do this manually.

Enjoy the increased productivity that you will get from running more than one computer at the same time.