A recent Lifehacker article recommended a piece of software called Synergy to allow one keyboard/mouse to control multiple machines, across platforms, pulling clipboard data along the way (as well as syncing screensavers). The problem is, Synergy hasn’t been updated in nearly three years and I couldn’t get it working.

Digging through the comments, I found Teleport, which has the disadvantage of being Mac-only, but the advantage of… well… working. Quite nicely, at that. It is more polished, prettier, supports drag-and-drop file copying, and has more robust options.

Installation is a snap. Add a preference pane to each machine, turn it on, arrange your monitors as in a dual-display setup, and set options as shown above. Et voila.

One cautionary note: tablets are not as yet really supported, but switching my Bamboo to mouse mode has done the trick (this is a meaningful tradeoff, and I’m hopeful for a fix).

This will be a substantial boon for my productivity and happiness.

Two more screenshots after the jump.

Teleport (also on VersionTracker)