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Multiplicity multiplies your input
By Gearhead, NetworkWorld.com, 04/05/05
A new product from Stardock Corporation is one of the most creative ideas we've seen for a while. The product is called Multiplicity and it addresses the situation where you have several monitors on your desk each attached to a different PC but where you really only need a single keyboard and mouse.
Multiplicity is a driver that detects the position of your mouse and when it hits the left or right side of the screen hands the mouse and keyboard events to another PC. In other words, your mouse lets you determine which PC you are interacting with. Neat!
Using any available TCP/IP connection, Multiplicity allows not only input devices sharing but also clipboard sharing between your main (master) computer and the slave computers. With the Pro version you can move files or entire directories between computers.
There's fast switching between computers via configurable hot-keys and mouse buttons and the screens of computers that don't have the focus (that is, aren't receiving the keyboard and mouse input) can be dimmed and Multiplicity can display an on-screen indicator of the current location.
The mouse can be locked to a specific desktop and there's full password protection. You can set a threshold to control of mouse movement between machines and Multiplicity even supports other types of input device such as jog dials and spatial controllers.
Multiplicity is currently available for 32-bit Windows XP, 2000, or Server 2003 on the primary machine (the one with an attached keyboard and mouse with the secondary machines running 32-bit Windows XP, 2000, Server 2003, or x64-versions of Windows XP or 2003 (Itanium processors are not supported and neither are Windows 98, Windows ME, or Windows 95).
Note that due to a design limitation of Windows 2000, machines running this OS require a mouse be connected even if it is not being used (if not, the mouse pointer image is not drawn). Stardock hopes that "we may be able to work around it in the future." A Mac OS version is planned.
The standard version of Multiplicity is priced at $39.95 while the Pro Version is $69.95.
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