ScottMyles.com

When I work from home I usually have two MacBook Pro’s in front of me and I’m constantly moving back and forth between two keyboards and two mice.

I started looking into KVM equipment with the thought of getting an external LCD monitor (which I plan to do anyway in a few months), but they’re pretty darned expensive. So I started to think about software control of the two Macs.

Initially I came across Synergy, which has support for Windows, Unix and Mac OS X. This would be an ideal solution were I wanting to control different platforms, but I only have Macs. Synergy hasn’t been updated in a while and setup under OS X Leopard appeared rather clunky with the need to launchd a server on one mac and a client on the other. In the end I got it to work, but not with the ability to autostart at login.

Digging around the web a little deeper, I came across Adam Carmody’s review of Teleport on MacApper (I happen to be a big fan of MacApper ).

Teleport is Mac OS X only and is easy to setup and configure through the System Preferences.

If you’re using this on Tiger, you need to open a few ports in the firewall, but not within Leopard. After a quick install of Teleport, you need to activate each Mac and enable Share this Mac in the preferences pane. Move the screens around in the order you’d like them, similar to the Display Arrangement in the system Display preferences.

Additionally, Teleport supports drag’n drop of files between Macs and synchronization of pasteboards. An icon in the menubar enables the user to know which Mac is being controlled at anytime.

I’m really impressed with Teleport (donation-ware) and recommend it to anyone with multiple Macs. Now I’m able to share my bluetooth mouse and bluetooth keyboard between both MBPs with ease.

Synergy, Teleport