Update: After reading our review, Michael Schmidt from the ShareMouse Team got in touch with me with a few reactions to some of the points I made in this post. Where pertinent, I’ve updated and amended some of the content to incorporate his input.
ShareMouse Feature Rundown
ShareMouse is yet another application that lets you share your mouse and keyboard with multiple Windows or Mac computers. It’s free for personal use but $24.95 per license for “power or pro” users (more on this later). When compared to Synergy and the rest of the lot, ShareMouse distinguishes itself from the well-established competition with a few key features:
Automatic configuration (no fiddling with machine names and IP addresses)Handy hotkeys and graphical cues for keeping track of where your pointer isGlitch-free clipboard sharing (copy and paste image and text between computers)Password protection and network encryptionUpdate: Michael from ShareMouse pointed out a unique feature that I missed: “ShareMouse works in any direction. You can control any computer from any other computer in any direction. No restricting one-way master&slave architecture.”
Those are what I see as ShareMouse’s main strengths. But if you’d like to see it in action, check out their demo video:
Want more details? Let’s take a closer look.
ShareMouse Configuration
My tutorial for setting up Synergy in Windows 7 was a bit lengthy. There were a lot of steps. The ShareMouse equivalent will be much shorter. Start by grabbing the appropriate version from the ShareMouse download page (Windows or Mac OS X 32-bit or Mac OS X 64-bit). All you need to do to get started with ShareMouse is to install the utility on each computer. Once ShareMouse is installed, the computers will instantly “see” each other on the network and start sharing. The only important configuration options for Windows 7 are these two here: Configure Windows firewall and Install Windows Service for UAC support.
The first one is essential (unless you plan to configure your firewall to allow traffic from ShareMouse manually). The second one about the User Account Control support is less essential. In fact, I left it unchecked. This option allows a shared keyboard to click the “Allow” button when you get the UAC window (usually for actions that need administrator access, such as tweaking system settings and installing programs). The drawback of leaving this unchecked is that you’ll have to use the local keyboard or mouse to allow such actions. Not a huge inconvenience to me. (It should also be noted that Synergy has a similar checkbox for “Elevated access,” but this is checked/unchecked after the installation process.) When you are done installing, ShareMouse takes a moment to assure you that, even though your antimalware software might say otherwise, ShareMouse is not spyware and that you should ignore any warnings from your security programs. More on that later.
When installing on a Mac, you don’t get the option to configure the firewall automatically. Instead, ShareMouse will ask you to Enable access for assistive devices when you first run ShareMouse. You can find this option by clicking System Preferences > Accessibility. It’s in the lower-left corner. After installing the program on both computers, it’ll instantly begin working. In fact, I was a bit startled when my mouse hopped over to my other computer before I had even configured the screens. ShareMouse made a lucky guess as to how my screens were configured, but you can rearrange where the mouse exits/enters the screen by clicking the Monitor Manager button.
This pulls up a nice drag-and-drop interface for setting up your monitor positions. This is similar to the Windows display setup for multiple monitors and is more intuitive and nuanced than Synergy’s grid-style drag and drop screen link configuration.
As you’re doing this, a letter will show up on the remote monitors so you can easily identify them. Those are the essential features you’ll want to configure. But you can also tweak the screen dimming and/or choose a hotkey to switch between monitors. While not a game-changer, the screen dimming is a nice touch (and one that Synergy lacks). When you switch between monitors, a big white arrow shows you where your mouse went.
Clipboard Sharing and Drag and Drop
Clipboard sharing in ShareMouse is enabled by default. The only quirk is that you must use the hotkey to paste a shared clipboard rather than the context menu (Edit > Paste). You can set it up in the Data Exchange pane. Update: Michael from ShareMouse points out that this isn’t a quirk or a bug; it’s a feature. Assigning a hotkey to your shared clipboard lets you distinguish between whether you want to paste from your local clipboard or the shared clipboard. Good point.
You can also drag and drop files from one computer to another. I tested this by dragging a couple of images from Mac OS X’s Finder into Windows Live Writer. It worked flawlessly. However, according to ShareMouse’s documentation, dragging and dropping files doesn’t work if you run ShareMouse as an administrator. I haven’t tested that out, but if that’s true, then it’s another good reason to leave the UAC service option unchecked during the installation. Update: I jogged over this point quickly without getting into some of the handy applications of cross-platform dragging and dropping. Using ShareMouse for popping one file over to another machine is much easier than most of us have been doing—e.g., transferring via Dropbox, emailing ourselves attachments, or copying to a thumb drive. ShareMouse’s drag and drop file transfer is considerably cleaner and less cluttered than those methods.
Password Protection and Data Encryption
ShareMouse’s automatic configuration might be an issue if you want to limit control of your computer to only a few machines on your network. To remedy this, ShareMouse allows you to enter a password for each machine. Only machines that have the same passwords will share their keyboard and mouse.
You can also enable data encryption, which might hinder someone on the network trying to intercept copied and pasted contents or log keystrokes.
Licensing, Privacy, and Other Considerations
Update: What follows is a discussion about the information that ShareMouse collects about its users. Michael from ShareMouse was a bit taken aback by my heavy focus on the possible privacy implications of using ShareMouse. I can’t blame him for that. But I would like to note that I—like many other groovyPost contributors—make a special effort to highlight any possible privacy or security concerns as part of all software reviews. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Google’s Picasa, Facebook’s iPhone app, or something by an independent developer. We know we are paranoid about this. And we don’t mean anything personal by it. But we’d like to give as much information as possible while letting the readers decide. Above, I mentioned two things that I would talk about later. The first was the price, and the second is the claim that ShareMouse is not spyware. These two items go somewhat hand-in-hand.
Free for Personal Use
ShareMouse is free for personal use. The big limitation to the free, unregistered version is that you can only use it with two computers. In addition to the two computers’ limitations, several other caveats are meant to distinguish between a personal user and a “pro or power user.” This includes things like support for server operating systems (like Windows Server), support for more than two monitors total, the presence of a domain controller on the local network, or “use of software which is typically used in professional environments.” That’s all well and good—I appreciate that the makers of ShareMouse would want to be paid for their hard work if it turns out that their software helps you make money. But the way they determine whether or not you are a power or professional user is a bit…funny. Rather than operating on the honors system or requiring a license key to “unlock” support for the abovementioned system configurations, ShareMouse works by automatically detecting pro environments. For example, if it notices that you are running AutoCAD or Adobe professional software, it’ll kick into “demo mode.” Demo mode works as normal for a few minutes before deactivating keyboard and mouse sharing. You can reactivate it by restarting ShareMouse. This seems like an unnecessarily clever way to enforce commercial licensing. Although I can’t immediately think of how this sort of awareness of your system could be malicious, it does sort of highlight the fact that their program is keeping tabs on this type of stuff. It’s also worth mentioning that ShareMouse says this on their website: That’s not to say that ShareMouse doesn’t collect or transmit any information over the internet. According to their End User License Agreement (EULA), ShareMouse does phone home with your “license key, time/date of access, hardware ID and IP address for a limited time on our server for security reasons and to avoid software piracy.” This happens whenever you check for updates or register a license key. Update: Michael from ShareMouse points out that this is standard practice and is shared by Windows, OS X, DreamWeaver, etc. He also notes that there is an offline registration process available. All of that is strictly for your information. Despite all the time I’ve spent examining the privacy and security considerations, I will say that personally, I would not feel uncomfortable using ShareMouse based on what I discussed. What would stop me, however, is the price. ShareMouse is $24.95 per license. And you need one license per computer. So, at a minimum, you are paying $49.90. But considering that most people who will feel the need to pay for ShareMouse are those with more than two computers (since you can use two machines for free), then realistically, you’ll be buying three licenses for a total of $74.85. Update: From Michael at ShareMouse: Again, we never collect, share or sell confidential information. Period. Another period. And for paranoids, a bonus period: Period. However… bundling software with 3rd party toolbar browser “add-ons” like Synergy does certainly compromises user’s privacy: It’s the sole job of “browser add-ons” of this nature to collect, share and exploit user’s data! We are approached by the toolbar installer bundling mafia regularly but always rejected them …for privacy reasons.
Verdict
In my opinion, the free version of ShareMouse is an outstanding value. It’s much more user-friendly than Synergy, so much so that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to some of my less tech-savvy family members. But as someone who frequently uses two displays on one machine (whether it’s another monitor or a TV via HDMI out), the free version won’t work for me. I’d much rather use Synergy for free. I think other “power and pro” users would agree—especially since the types of people who tend to have multiple computers and multiple monitors are usually geeky enough to navigate Synergy with ease. Overall, I have to congratulate ShareMouse on creating a keyboard and mouse sharing program that is more user-friendly than Synergy. But if I could give some feedback to the makers, it’d be to make the pricing a bit more accessible and the mechanism for enforcing the licenses a little bit more conventional. Also, sharemouse requires to be run as admin if it wants to interact with higher privileged screens (i.e.Windows Services). I wonder how Synergy can do it all from the service account… In the meantime, see: http://synergy-foss.org/spit/issues/details/646/ Latest from a forum admin: CTRL-ALT-DEL is grabbed from the remote controlling PC’s OS on a very low level. We will add a customizable hotkey for this action in a future version. You may have to remap your buttons – but it definately works unlike sharemouse. Oh I posted a question on Sharemouse’s forums regarding CTRL+ALT+DEL support… they deleted my post… Mouse without borders – CAD only works on slaves with windows 7/ Server R2 with a plug in Input Director – CAD works on all windows XP, Vista, Win7. Didn’t try on win8 yet. But clipboard keeps crashing on me. I got a bad taste in my mouth using their demo. Unlike most demos where they allow you to use it for 15 or 20 days, theirs stops working after a few minutes. So after spending the time to configure the 3 monitors, it stopped working just as my softphone was ringing, and my keyboard couldn’t reach the system. At that moment, I stopped considering buying the product and I re-installed teleport. Since there are 2 free alternatives, I wouldn’t use share-mouse even for free. Most systems support dual monitors, so if you want to add another in the future you’ll have to get used to a new program unless you want to pay $75 for share mouse. They argue that their market is small so they have to charge alot. Well guess what? the “market” for a $19 product is vastly larger than the market for a $75 product. It’s called elasticity of demand. At $75 I’m surprised there’s any market at all. “Useless”? Great smoked kippers! What’s the big deal with Ctrl-Alt-Del ? I mean, why can’t you just lean over a few inches to the relevant keyboard and Ctrl-Alt-Del from there? I mean, how often do you need Ctrl-Alt-Del in any case, for cripes sake? Or am I missing something? Is Ctrl-Alt-Del cipher for something else? I’m a developer and I’d say I’m quite comfortable with all manner of technical things, but I simply could not get Synergy OR Mouse Without Borders to work (despite a great deal of effort). Share Mouse is the only one that’s been of any use to me so far. I’m using it at home at the moment with 2 machines, but if it proves to work after a few days I will definitely buy the licences and use it for 4 machines at work. The only annoyance I have found thus far is that despite ticking the box for UAC support during installation, this feature just doesn’t seem to work. When I move the mouse onto a screen that has an UAC-type dialog, the application just freezes. I’m impressed. Only thing I really would like is to be able to move a window from my mac to my PC and vice-verse (extend desktop feature like maxi vista but for a mac as the host). Oh, and if the price is really killing you, try this web site… They have a 30% off coupon, so two computers licensed for about 35 bucks. http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/sharemouse-mouse-and-keyboard-sharing-software The other is for your mac ($19.99) and enables you to use the mac monitor as a display for your pc. It plays nicely with sharemouse. It works nicely with the multi-desktop of the mac. Simply expand the Air Display window into full screen mode and then you can use your mac touchpad to swipe between your mac desktop and the extra desktop for your windows PC, still using the same keyboard and mouse via sharemouse. Still, I would like somebody to engineer a software that allows me to use any input device with any output device on any computer on the network and give me a simple, single config panel for all of it. Inputs: Keyboards, mice, touchpads, iPhones, iPads, microphones (even if attached to the iPhone). Outputs: Headphones, displays, iPads, iPhones. Both of these companies seem to be getting there, but I still can’t drag a window from my mac to the pc. I could setup a vnc type setup on the pc to view the mac, I suppose. But alas, enough for today. Thanks for the review of this sharemouse product. I find it useful. Hope the discount coupon and the ideas for Air Display are useful for some other people. Big problem… Mouse without Borders Service stops. If I restart the service, it stops again after a second or so. Something is preventing the Service from staying loaded and running. Any ideas??? Thanks! Nicholas Kormanik I just wanted to say my bit about the AVG Toolbar that was very briefly bundled with Synergy back in 2012 when this article was written. We removed it! :-) Quite some time ago in fact. After including it with 2 versions, we decided it wasn’t the right way to raise money for open source. The bundled installation was optional, and was easy to avoid. Approximately 0.05% of our users installed it according to the statistics we got from AVG, and around 90% of those users uninstalled it afterwards. So the “damage” was very minimal and is often exaggerated, massively. I do admit though that it was a mistake to bundle the AVG Toolbar with Synergy, and we later found a better way of raising funds for our project. As for the features that ShareMouse has, which Synergy is lacking, we have plans… http://synergy-foss.org/goals/ Thanks, Nick Bolton Project Leader Synergy SCNR
- You charge users for having bugs fixed. Wait. It’s even worse. You take money not to FIX bugs but just to allow us to BEG (‘vote’) for a fix. How easy! All the money, no obligations. Come on. The stuck modifier key bug is age-old and you will never fix it because it’s your cash cow. We don’t pay you to carbon copy other software. We want Synergy to be stable. Finally!
- You make money by compromising computers with crap ware installers and now even ridicule legit complaints? Your selfish attitude ruins the spirit of oss.
- Users must donate to have all advertised features which makes Synergy the world’s first feature crippled open source software. This is beyond ridiculous. As a nerd you believe it is about features. But users don’t leave Synergy in favor of ShareMouse or Input Director because Synergy lacks features. Synergy lacks quality and genuine open source community spirit. It is not a good idea to turn a small oss project into your personal commercial business. You are killing it. And before you kill it will be forged and that forge will kill your business. That is why it will not work out for you. Drag and drop will be Premium-only only until it’s more stable, then we plan to release it to the public (actually you can very easily comment out a line to enable it). This is the only Premium-only feature. Contrary to what you suggest, this is not a scheme to make money at all, we simply want to limit the number of users testing it to those who love Synergy enough to back the project. In fact, most people donate because they want to help out the project succeed — we don’t really get that many people giving us money to unlock features. I’m flattered that you think drag and drop is so valuable that restricting it to Premium-only users is “crippling” the software, you must really love that feature! As for the Premium votes, again, not that many people actually use their votes, most people just want to help out the project. The AVG Toolbar was a very brief mistake, which we quickly corrected. Why must you insist dragging up the past like that anyway? It doesn’t really achieve anything in this context. As I said in my earlier message, the AVG Toolbar thing is massively exaggerated (often by people like you), it was optional, and easy to remove. Whatever your reasons for being so insanely bitter about Synergy or open source business, just let it go — its really not worth getting so aggravated about. Maybe you should go outside for a bit? Anyway just calm down mate — Life’s too short! :-) Thanks for using Synergy! Cheers, Nick Here is the definition of open source as provided by the Open Source Initiative – Open source software is software that can be freely used, changed, and shared (in modified or unmodified form) by anyone. Open source software is made by many people, and distributed under licenses that comply with the Open Source Definition. Cheers. Synergy is still open source, and will always be! To grab the source, just visit our GitHub project: https://github.com/synergy/synergy/ Just to clarify, when they say free, they don’t mean like “free beer” (its more like “free speech”). When you download the Synergy source, you can modify it, redistribute it, and use it for whatever you like! Thanks, Nick I switched away from Synergy as it lost its OSS spirit. The whole point in free and open source software is not to make the binaries available free of charge. What you’re talking about is known as “freeware” which is not the same thing as “free software”, not even closely related despite sounding similar. Take a look at this article if you’re still not sure about the difference between “free software” and “freeware”: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html Thanks, Nick Here are the Synergy binaries: http://synergykm.com/ FREE as in “FREE”! Also, I’m experiencing regular sharemouse crashes here ins 10.8.5 (it quits on its own randomly. Also quitting various apps will occasionally cause share mouse to quit as well.) As stated on their support page, they won’t reply to support requests for non paying customers. Unfortunately they won’t even reply with a simple ‘we are aware and are working on it’. I can’t justify buying a license if they won’t confirm any of the bugs I’m experiencing are being addressed. Great idea, but that’s a deal breaker for me… Please note hat we are located in Germany with eventual time shift between locations. As you realized, it is common sense to serve freeware users are limited. However, we read every email and if we need additional information, we will follow up of course. If you are interested in ongoing development activities, please visit the beta test forum at http://www.bartelsmedia.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=177 Again, I understand your policy is not to reply to non-paying customers, and I appreciate you even writing back. Truly. That being said you did not respond to my second email in which I asked if someone could simply acknowledge if these issues are being addressed. Thank you for not posting my email address. If you have time, you could try decompiling ShareMouse to see how it calls system functions (i.e. when and in what order). Compare this to Synergy and you can reach your own conclusion. stackoverflow.com/questions/205059/is-there-a-c-decompiler You can access Synergy’s source code here: https://github.com/symless/synergy I’m a simple user, not a skilled coder!
If you have time, you could try decompiling ShareMouse to see how it calls system functions ShareMouse just locks up my USB, it does this randomly. It’s been frustrating. I contacted support. First email i never heard a reply. Then the second email they sent me a link showing me i was suppose to give them all my serial code and other info, which i did in the first email including a well thought out description of the problem. Contact through email wasn’t easy. I called their number and left a pleading message that i needed help for my paid version of ShareMouse. In the end i finally got a response in email, they wanted me to help them diagnose the issue. I really was out of patience and dollars with ShareMouse, i had already spent too much time trying to make it work, i needed to get to work. I’ve used Multiplicity 2.x for years, but it start throwing a harmless error here and there but functioned fine. I thought i’d look around and check my options. ShareMouse initially seemed perfect, but where i screwed up was testing it for 20 minutes and thinking all was well. That’s why i bought it. Now it just locks up my USB randomly. It was a waste of money. I’ll be sure to pass that on in my professional forums. I just downloaded Multiplicity 3.x. I’m hoping this works out fine andif so i’ll upgrade to it. I’ve been using Multiplicity 3.x for a few days now and everything has been fine. On a side note, one feature or functionality difference i’ve found between ShareMouse and Multiplicity is that when you get to the login screen, Mutliplicity is functioning, so i can use the one keyboard and mouse to login on either system. With ShareMouse, i had to login with the keyoard and mouse physical connected to the particular system i’m logging into. This problem with ShareMouse is either that ShareMouse is a USB glitchy problem like i’ve discovered elsewhere on my system, or it doesn’t remember the monitor layout after a reboot (i.e. is sees the right system monitor as above or below or wherever, but not in the place it was when i rebooted). I did find problems with it remembering monitor layouts. It’s suspicious that ShareMouse has a shortcut for in case of emergency, to disconnect the keyboard and mouse sharing (as if it is a known and potential problem). I don’t remember seeing such an ejection seat setting in Multiplicity 2.x and i couldn’t find one in 3.x. I guess a simple way to describe the difference between ShareMouse and Multiplicity is that Multiplicity is seamless and ShareMouse is not. “As we have a nice and friendly customer base, a refund for your purchase is on the way. Uninstall ShareMouse now.” Moral of the story I guess is, if you’re having issues and want to part ways as a refunded customer, give them constructive criticism. They will treat you like crap, and justify it by refunding your money, as well as blackballing you (this was confirmed in a following emial). If you like them, be careful what you say. They don’t take constructive criticism well. The funny thing to me is, shortly after this, we were looking at getting licensing for text expansion org wide (about 150 user at the time), and their company makes one of the industry leading apps for text expansion. Then I remembered that they make it, connected with other deciders and reviewed this experience/my email correspondence with their support team, and we decided to go in a different direction. Stable software and a stable support teams are important in business, and they seem to be lacking at times in both of these areas. Maybe 200mSec or so. I have no fix but would indeed be interested in one… But for basic mouse & keyboard & clipboard, Synergy works better. MUCH better. It’s more reliable, there is less lag on the client machine, it deals with my different monitor pixel densities much better, there are fewer problems with copying text to the clipboard. With Synergy I forget these are even two different computers. Synergy is also cheaper and open source. It was the clear winner for me. Has anyone that has tested this software tried this and found this issue? BTW in Synergy, if you lock the mouse cursor to the client PC, that panning amplification stops, but isn’t a very good solution because you are often times switching back and forth and locking the mouse slows that down. Just curious, if it doesn’t suffer from that I would consider switching programs since I use it to game a lot and that turning to where it literally spins your character around 100 times before you can stop is annoying at best. You have a surprising patience of using sw for “well over two years” while having nothing than “endless troubleshooting”. Well, if you are really a user and dont have another agenda. contact support. They are very helpful. I want people to know that this is not as rosey as this review tries to make things. I have used Sharemouse and Teleport and they each fail repeatedly. I wrote support a few times, but quite honestly life is too short. No program should require tech support and to me it issimply not worth the time or effort. Same goes for asking for a refund. Now I simply use OSX built in screen share app for my two macs. Free and a better solution. @righty I would assume his agenda is he’s a fanboy. It happens, and I would assume that would really lead to a great support experience for him anyway. It is a bit strange that he assumes that anyone that has frustration with this software or their support has an agenda though. The long version: Things for me started well enough with ShareMouse. I installed I on two computers, and it worked, so I decided to buy a license and see how it compared for a setup that I had been using synergy to control, that involved 5 systems and 7 screens total. Almost right away I had problems. When I added the first few systems, all was well. However as I went along arranging monitors suddenly my monitors snapped into a weird configuration, where almost all of them show up tightly, as one monitor on the left most edge of the monitor manager, and one of them showed up in the right most edge. There was no way to adjust it, there were just two little circles on each side of my screen. After trying to fix it for hours, I emailed what I thought was support, and asked them if there was a way to reset the monitors. A few days later, after not receiving a response, I looked at their site, and discovered that even though my purchase came with a year of maintenance, we were expected to seek support through a forum. This was something I’m not really ok with. For free software it may make sense to have forum based support, but if you are paying for maintenance as part of your license, then for various reasons that are too long to go into here, forum based support would make more sense. So I emailed this team again, and let them know that forum based support wasn’t acceptable to me and asked if they could help me without going through the forums. The response I received was a promising one. It asked why I assumed forum based support is less helpful, and gave some reasons why bartelsmedia thinks it is better. This was followed by saying there was no problem, they could help me by email instead. In my follow up email, this is apparently where things went sideways. I responded to their question about why I felt forum based support is less helpful, responding to each reason they gave regarding why they thought it was better. It wasn’t a personal attack, I didn’t say anything that was intended as mean spirited, I have been the help desk person receiving these emails in the past and tend to be sensitive to that kind of thing when sending emails. However since they asked for my feedback I gave it. After this I asked for them to let me know how long the refund period for this software is, because to go through the troubleshooting steps they requested, I would need to be in the same physical location that some of the five systems are in. I would also need to pull out some mobile systems that I don’t always have with me, since I am almost always on at my job, and my time with friends and family is precious, I didn’t know when I would have time to go through the troubleshooting steps they needed me to go through. If I didn’t have time to do it before a refund period was over then I would request a refund. This seemed reasonable enough to me. Other than providing some critical feedback (which was in response to a question they asked) I never said anything that I would have been offended to receive if I had been the helpdesk agent. If anyone really wants to know what was said, I would have no problem pasting the contents of that exchange here, it isn’t something I see any reason to feel shame for. However the response I received was that since they have a “nice and friendly customer base, a refund for your purchase is on the way.” They also told me to Uninstall ShareMouse immediately. This response was unexpected, and when I requested further information about what happened, they verified that they thought I was rude and they didn’t want me as a customer. Since I choose to live a life without conflict I asked for them to help me understand what came across as rude so I could avoid it in the future, acknowledged that tone doesn’t communicate well via email, and tried to help them understand my intended tone in the previous email. Being put in confrontational situations like this distresses me, and when things like this happen, I do what I can to find reconciliation (and this isn’t something I would expect to need to do for solicited feedback toward a company). However on their side they have already stopped communicating with me. So the main thing here is to be careful with criticism of this company and it’s way of doing business, apparently they don’t take it well, and saying the wrong thing can turn a helpful tech support team into one that refuses to take your business. Have I requested a refund? No. Did I get a refund? Yes. This is part of the problem. My concern that they don’t provide email support was addressed and I was happy about this, but I didn’t know when I would be able to send them the information they requested on their support page. This is why I requested information on what the window was for a refund, so if I didn’t have time provide them the information they were requesting, I could request a refund and not risk being left with software that wasn’t working. I was totally game for trying their support steps if time allowed before their refund window closed. Instead they appear to have taken the request for this information as rudeness on my part, and blackballed me as a customer. (They told me this when I asked for clarification after they refunded my money). This was an unexpected negative escalation in our communication and it left me questioning what I did wrong. Finding nothing inherently rude in my email to them I wanted to let others know that if they have an experience like this with their support they are not alone. The article compares Synergy V1 to ShareMouse V1. Synergy V2 has been out for 6 months now (although still Beta as of May 2018) and it is a complete re-write of the UI, including addressing many of the feature differences pointed out by the article’s author. ShareMouse has also been updated (V3 now?), but I am not as familiar with it. I think ShareMouse changed their pricing model somewhat, but Synergy is still much cheaper and has a more liberal licensing policy (no limitations of number of computers, monitors, or having to buy a license for each computer). I don’t work for Symless (Synergy), but I’ve been a happy user for many years, and thought it was worth mentioning this. BN, I did try synergy initially…really hard to set up for the layman. Sharemouse worked great right away. To stay tuned for improvements, please make sure to have the software update check feature enabled in ShareMouse and consider setting it to “minor updates” (learn more at https://www.sharemouse.com/doc/settings/network/#update). In the meantime, please carefully double-check the suggestions in the troubleshooting section: https://www.sharemouse.com/doc/troubleshooting/ It is a well-maintained compendium of all tips we are aware of. If the troubleshooting doesn’t help we would have no idea what do look for anyway. If we become aware of new tips, those would be immediately added.” “As we have a nice and friendly customer base, a refund for your purchase is on the way. Uninstall ShareMouse now. Best regards” @ShareMouse Team and @Bartels Media GmbH Your welcome to post the messages between us, or I probably could on request. The entire situation is outlined elsewhere in these comments. I might have been spoiled over my 18 years of technical operations by support teams at other companies. I would be interested to hear more of the ShareMouse Teams perspective on our parting of ways. To this day, to the best of my knowledge, it may just be that the support agent was having a bad day and took it out on me, I don’t know. It seems this is a case of, deal with them at your own risk. Might make more sense to just not deal with them at all. Can you brain bring this together somehow? Does your talents allow you taking responsibility for your own fail? Re Windows 7 eat this: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-windows-7-support I tried both Synergy and Sharemouse. Both were meh, Synergy was riddled with bugs and Sharemouse has an unpalatable €120ish charge (extra VAT sweden). I found one called “Across Center” which basically acts as a bluetooth device for another computer (or device) to connect to. It works flawlessly, it took a tiny bit of config – edit the client to disallow “dragging between devices” which was basically edge transfer and enabled middle click switching. One of the great news is that I have yet to see the same input lag that I saw on Synergy and Sharemouse, mainly because they are not traversing back to the router and back. Since it is Bluetooth it exhibits the same performance as a BT device with no input lag. Bonus: 30 minutes per boot trial and €20 cost. I wrote a review about my experience on TrustPilot, and the developer threatened to sue me. So I removed it from my computer, and switched to Synergy. It works perfectly, no problems whatsoever. I’ve been using Across Center for a couple of weeks now, and it has performed flawlessly. It’s a little pricy, especially if you go for a lifetime license rather than a monthly subscription. The only glitch for me was that with a bluetooth connection, the scrolling rate is too fast on the client machine. I put in a request on their forum and the developer responded quickly. His suggestion of using a network connection instead of BT worked great. (I was using a direct Thunderbolt bridge network between the machines for file sharing already, but it seems fine even over wifi.) The developer provides great tech support on the forum, and is friendly and funny. For me, the lifetime license was worth eliminating the aggravation that ShareMouse and Synergy were causing. I paid partly to save money over the long haul, but also to reward the work of a developer who loves his product and treats his customers with respect. It was frustration with Synergy that led me to switch to ShareMouse. Basically, I got tired of spending hours trying to get Synergy to work again after changing my computer configuration. ShareMouse seemed to make it easier to add a new machine to the mix, and spending a little money for that was worth it. But eventually I became frustrated with ShareMouse as well, for the reasons mentioned in my post as well as issues that others have reported above. I started looking for another alternative, discovered Across Center (I think when a google search landed on this blog site). I gave it a try, and apart from the bluetooth scrolling issue I mentioned it just works, all the time. If I unplug one of my MacBooks to go elsewhere, then return and plug it back into my network, Across immediately starts working again as if the traveling machine had been there all along. With ShareMouse, this almost always going into the settings and tweaking something to get it going again. If I logged out of the client machine and logged in as a different user, I would run into problems connecting again (even if it was just a “fast switch”). I can’t tell you how many times I had to quit and restart ShareMouse on both machines to get them reconnected, possibly involving a reboot as well. In my configuration,I connect to the internet via a wireless router, but link my machines using a TB Bridge network. ShareMouse refused to remember this and I was constantly having to go into the settings and retype the IP numbers of the machines and tell it to use the TB network rather than Wifi. With Across, I can do a fast user switch using my main keyboard and mouse (rather than an uncomfortable move to the keyboard of the client Mac)–the mouse/keyboard sharing never stops working throughout this process. The last straw was when I started using a Parallels virtual machine on Catalina to run 32-bit software under Mojave, and some kind of weird competition then ensued that caused problems with my connection to the other MacBook. I was getting ready to initiate a dialog with the developer to try and resolve these issues, but decided to look around before contacting them. When I hit on Across and tried the demo, it was like a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders (fingers?). Maybe the honeymoon will end at some point, but since my first post I have continued to have zero problems with Across after several more days. For me, it’s much more important that software do its primary job rather than have a glitzy interface or lots of cool features. If it can do both, great, but not doing the primary job well is a show stopper. E.g., the ShareMouse monitor configuration is cool, but I find that it’s totally unnecessary. Left, right, above, or below is all I care about, and that’s what Across provides. One thing I do miss from ShareMouse is the ability to drag files between computers. It’s not a deal breaker for me because I already have the machines connected on a fast network and can just use smb sharing. I also really liked the new feature of allowing the inactive screen to dim when switching between machines. File dragging is on Across’s list of upcoming features, and perusal of the support blog there suggests that the developer is very good about doing what he says he’s planning to do. Whew, I guess I did have a bit to add after all, but I hope this is helpful. I tried Across but it was too complicated. Sharemouse is so much easier to setup. Comment Name * Email *
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