PC Magazine reviews Multiplicity

If you have more than one computer in your office, you need this program...

from JoeUser Forums

PC Magazine has reviewed Multiplicity 1.0. Their Conclusion: "If your desk is holding up more than one PC, you need this product."

Multiplicity lets users take multiple computers in their office and control them all from a single keyboard and mouse. It then provides a universal clipboard between the machines so that users can treat them all as a single unit. Stardock also makes Multiplicity Pro which adds the ability to copy files and folders back and forth between machines seamlessly.

You can try it for yourself at http://www.multiplicity.net. Click on the link below to see the PC Magazine Review.

1,172 views 2 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
This may be answered in the review, but what is the differnce between this and Remote Desktop? I read brad's article, and maybe Im just dense, but I don't see the advantage of Multiplicity over Remote Desktop. You give a feature comparison between Multiplicty Standard and Pro, how about between Multiplicty and other like products?

One thing that seems different is the fact you need 2 monitors, and you can drag your mouse over (which is neat), so if I understand correctly.... say I use a laptop, and administer other boxes via remote desktop, so this seems like it may not be a good replacement?
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
My educated guess based on what I've read:

The difference between Multiplicity and Remote Desktop/VNC etc... is that in this case you have multiple physical machines arrayed in front of you. Lets say you have a laptop, and two desktops. If you wanted to use all of them, you had to clutter your desk with keyboards and mice for all of them and would have to physically move yourself or your desk setup a bit every time you switched machines. Now, you have one control point, but the monitors stay where they are. You can move your mouse and keyboard between the systems easily.

Think of it as having dual (or tripple) monitors, and each monitor has a remote desktop session running to another machine. The big difference here is you can run more powerful applications on the client machines. RD/VNC don't do games or anything that changes the screen image rapidly. Even on the fastest networks there's always definite mouse and image lag. Multiplicity can run games, advanced graphics software etc because instead of passing the image back to the main machine like you do with Remote Desktop, instead you're passing keyboard and mouse data to the slave machines. Takes up way less bandwidth.

This isn't a solution for administering networks really unless you keep the servers on your desk along side of your desktop machine. This is for those of us who have multiple desktop machines on our desk and want to use them all easily, to pass information back and forth between them... and do it all without cluttering our desk with extra sets of peripherals.
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