I recently moved around my office and set up my old iMac on the same desk as my MacBook Pro. Not wanting to have two mice (mices?!) and two keyboards (technically 3) cluttering up my desk I remembered an application I used to use a few years back called Teleport that solves this problem.
Teleport is a free preference extension for OS X (PPC and Intel) that you install on each machine you want to control. After the install it’s as easy as identifying which computer you want to be the host, and which you want to be controlled by the hosts keyboard/mouse.
Here is how Abyssoft describes the product:
Teleport lets you use a single mouse and keyboard to control several Macs.
Simply reach an edge of your screen, and your mouse teleports to your nearby Mac, which also becomes controlled by your keyboard. The pasteboard can be synchronized, and you can even drag & drop files between your Macs.
After you activate teleport on both machines they will display in your preference pane, allowing you to drag the external machine around to your liking during setup. Also, plenty of security and extra options are available.
My personal preference is to have it set to only allow me to switch machines if my Command key is pressed down so I don’t have accidental “teleports”.
So if this stuff is not cool enough… You can also drag files between machines, and it can sync your clipboard. Shut up already! Right?
So why not use a tool like ScreenRecycler and extend your desktop? I thought of doing that first. But before I shell out for an app, I lke to make sure it doesn’t have a viable, free alternative. Also it occurred to me that I can now run other programs on my “second screen” and they don’t effect the processing power of my main computer. Like now I have iTunes running, tweetie, Yammer, and my mail program running on my iMac leaving Photoshop, Illustrator and all the real programs running on my MBP without having the other programs stealing RAM and power.
So for a free tool to extend your mouse and keyboard, Teleport get’s 3 enthusiastic Heck Yah’s in my book.
What could you use it for?
Brian says
I’ve been using Teleport for a little over a year now, and it’s been great. I love the drag and drop files between computers feature. Teleport can be a little janky at times (at least for me), but hey, it’s free. 🙂
Kylan Robinson says
I prefer Synergy (http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/) because it allows me to share my keyboard and mouse across computers with different operating systems. At work I have a Windows box and an Ubuntu box, and Synergy is a great way to work on them both at the same time.
The only drawback is that files can’t be copied/pasted from one computer to another using Synergy. That would be a really slick feature. Does Teleport support something like this?