I’m working from home today, for the first time. When I used to work from home at my last job, I could just use my computer here, connect to the VPN, and have access to everything I needed.

The new company, however, does things a little differently, and I’ve got a “work laptop”, which is fine. After starting work a few short minutes ago, I realized that I hated having two separate keyboards and mice. So I searched for an article I read on Lifehacker a few days ago, for details on Synergy.

Synergy allows you to share a keyboard and mouse across multiple computers on the same network. That means my nice keyboard and mouse for my “home” computer can zip right across mid-air, onto the laptop, and works just like it was connected to it directly.

I was a bit worried at first, seeing that the work laptop’s on the VPN, I didn’t know if Synergy would recognize it as being “on the same network”. But it did, and I had it up and running within a matter of minutes. If you’ve got the need to share a keyboard and mouse across multiple computers, Synergy is definitely the way to go. And the best part, it’s free.

Synergy’s been added to my “list of applications I can’t live without”, which I’ll post sometime later on.