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Obsession with desktop continues

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Desktop

This is my new office setup. I have been pushing around a lot of code lately and felt I needed more real-estate to effectively do what I'm doing. So I hooked up another monitor. All  3 are standard HP LP1965 19" monitors.

However, since none of my video cards support 3 monitors and I have a whole bunch of computers to hook up I had to do some complex wiring around :). If I number the screens 1,2,3 from left to right this is how it works out

  • 1 and 2 is connected to my main dev box (machine1)
  • 2 and 3 is connected to the machine I use for emails and browsing (machine 2)
  • 2 actually goes through a 4-port KVM switch using which it can circle through machine1, machine2 and two other less used machines
  • 1 also goes through a 2 port KVM switch and connects a xbox and machine 1
  • I don't use the laptop at work directly, I connect to it using remote desktop.

Sweet :)

It's not as complex as it sounds. For my normal flow I just use the KVM to switch between machine-1 and machine-2. I rarely need to switch between the xbox and machine1.

PS: Don't try to make much sense of the Vintage books on the shelve, I plan to keep them for some more time before handing them off to some historian.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    August 21, 2008
    You should check out Synegy for sharing a keyboard and mouse across computers instead of a KVM.  We use it and it's almost like having one computer--very simple to use and works wonderfully. http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/ Sam

  • Anonymous
    August 21, 2008
    Synergy looks extremely cool. Unfortunately it comes with a licence which will not allow me to use it at work :(

  • Anonymous
    August 21, 2008
    You're not allowed to use GPL software even for your own use (i.e., not as part of any application or distribution)?

  • Anonymous
    August 22, 2008
    The main issue is that when I accept an EULA and install it on a corporate machine I'm actually accepting in on behalf of Microsoft. Since I do not have the authority to accept a GPL license, I won't. This is very standard for all corporations. I can forward the license to our legal department and they would be able to tell me what to do. It's only that I don't think I want to take that trouble right now as my current solution is working pretty well.