Input Director vs. Synergy (Two Computers, One Keyboard)
If you have two windows based computers where you want to control both systems with the same keyboard, I would highly recommend the Input Director freeware over Synergy. Input director has a whole slew of advantages over synergy:
1. The mouse seamlessly slides from desktop to another without the use of hotkeys.
2. Special mouse/keyboard functions for my logitech mouse such as the document flip not only work on the host but the client as well.
3. Input director doesn’t cause the mouse input to flip out when a Direct X application is open (unlike synergy).
4. Support for both computers (master and slave) having multiple monitors.
The only disadvantage about Input Director is that it works for only windows based OS’s (unlike synergy which works for multiple OS’s – ie Linux, Mac, etc.). If you are controlling multiple computers which are all running windows OS’s, I recommend Input Director over Synergy. Also, Input director had an update this past September whereas Synergy hasn’t been updated in years…I have tested both and got both working but I can only vouch for Synergy’s functionality on two windows machines.
Here are some other pages comparing Input Director and Synergy: [1] and [2].
Tags: Input Director, Keyboard, Mouse, Synergy
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:19 am
Good post.
August 15th, 2009 at 11:48 am
Thank you for this. I use Input Director and had wondered about the advantage of Synergy over ID. I believe there’s a group working on Synergy2 soon to be released.
September 10th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Just couldn’t agree more. While synergy is OS independent, input director leaves it in the dust with it’s almost flawless architecture and numerous features. And what’s more, if you have two keyboard layouts installed, synergy just does not function and so far it’s not been fixed!
September 14th, 2009 at 5:54 am
[...] other news, I use this program called Input Director and I found this past June they released a <new version> to add additional support for [...]
November 2nd, 2009 at 9:19 am
[...] You can switch between the computer screens as though they were a single monitor. Check out this earlier blog post I did documenting the advantages input director has over synergy. Note – this software only [...]
January 25th, 2010 at 10:56 pm
One big drawback of Input director is NOT free for commercial use.
Later the creator can monetize it because it is not open source.
April 22nd, 2010 at 4:05 pm
Input Director is a DISASTER!!! Do not install this software. It has ruined my entire Windows 7 home network. When I attempt to uninstall the software, I get the message “Input Director is currently running. Please shut it down before attempting to re-install or upgrade.” When I click the Input Director icon, I get the meggage “Another instance of Input Director is already running.” When I attempt to stop the process using Task Manager, I get the message “The operation could not be completed. Access is denied.” I am the administrator of my network, and I am still not able to terminate the Input Director process. This has totally screwed up my entire home network. DO NOT INSTALL THIS SOFTWARE!!!!!!!
July 13th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
While the original Synergy is indeed abandoned there’s a fork called Synergy+ which is under active development and ought have several bugs fixed. Altough I can’t really comment on it’s performance as it seems to have abandoned support for W2K (or atleast my W2K crashed instantly the last time I tried Synergy+ on it) on more modern systems it ought to work.
I can see 2 real benefits (additionally the open source and multi platform statuses that have already been mentioned) speaking for Synergy: it does consume somewhat less memory (altough a couple of megs here and there are probably no big deal nowadays) and it can use advanced switching scenarious, a’la change to a secondary computer when moving to the corner of the screen or only through a 50px slot on the lower right side of the monitor.
December 10th, 2010 at 3:56 pm
In response to a previous post about multiple systems running a Windows O/S, I can vouch for synergy working correctly. My systems consist of one Vista, one Win 7 Pro, one Win 2K, and two running WIN XP/PRO. My only current problem is having my Vista and Win 7 systems automatically bring up synergy without having to logon. However, I believe there was a posted solution and I have yet to try it. I have yet to try ID, but that is in the immediate future.