Many of us have an old computer lying around with a monitor attached to it. Many of us also have 2 monitors connected to our main PC. Here’s 2 tools that I have used to effectively have 3 (or more) monitors at my disposal.

First let me give you a description of my setup: Main PC with 2 monitors in one gfx card, secondary PC with 1 monitor in one gfx card (has the ability to have 2, but I don’t have another monitor lying around, probably my next upgrade will include this).

My main PC is exactly what the name hints, it’s my main every day pc that I work on, browse on, play on. Majority of my work means I have an IDE open for coding, IE and Firefox open for testing and an SCP connection to the server that is hosting the content I am working on. Depending on the work I could also have a few notepads open as well as photoshop. Quite quickly it becomes a juggle between all the windows I am using and time consuming to alt+tab through them all.

Before I found the software able to share my secondary PC’s monitor, I used a KVM to control it as well as a VNC client. This PC was used as a “monitor”, I slapped a TV tuner card in and used to monitor servers on it. This was a waste of a valuable resource – screen real estate.

I can’t remember where I first saw the 2 different applications that can be used for this, so I thought I should share this with other people looking to maximise their display areas.

The first application is called Synergy. It is free for download and the application I am currently using. It works on a server client model and allows you to seamlessly move from one computer to the next as if the monitors were all connected to the same gfx card. It doesn’t let you drag applications across your different computers, but the clipboard works across them which is good enough for me.

The installation process is quite simple. You install it on the computers you are going to be using and decide which is going to be seen as the server and which is the client. In my case my main PC is my server and the secondary is the client. Configuration is a breeze and I will show you how to get it running from installation in 2 minutes.

Once installed, on the computer that is your server, you will need to configure the screen positions and computers that will be connecting

In case you are confused by the Screens and links, here’s how they are setup on my desk: A64 is my main PC, Monitor is the secondary and docmoolaptop is my laptop. A64 has two monitors with Monitor having one monitor to the right of A64. Then to the right of Monitor is where my laptop sometimes sits. So, A64 is to the left of Monitor, Monitor is to the right of A64 and the left of docmoolaptop, docmoolaptop is to the right of Monitor.

Once you have configured your server, you must configure the clients. This just involves filling in the IP address or hostname of the server computer and clicking start. You should now be able to move your mouse across the displays and use your keyboard too. [If this doesn't work, the Synergy site has a useful Troubleshooting section]

Synergy is the quickest and least painful of the 2 applications, the second being MaxiVista. Don’t be fooled by the name though, it actually doesn’t work on Vista unless you use the XPDM driver for your video card [more info]. I am one of those that jump into something before actually noticing this, so I can’t use this app properly as my main PC is Vista and the secondary is XP. I did install it on my XP PC as the server and on my Vista as the client, but it didn’t work too well seeing as I have 2 monitors connected to my main PC – it only used the 1.

Basically what it does is install a dummy monitor, which is where the driver comes into play, that your computer sees as being physically connected. MaxiVista then controls the switching between the 2 (or more) different computers quite efficiently. The little bit I did play around with this, I was impressed and will probably switch to it once they have fixed the Vista issues. MaxiVista is not free, and the one you would probably go for is $39.95. This one does everything except mirror the display of one computer across to the other.

Synergy has been an invaluable piece of software for me and I don’t know how I managed before having the use of 3 monitors (how did I even manage with 1?!). I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is trying to achieve the goal of having more screen real estate with a couple computers lying around.

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