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One of the programs I use a lot is a little app called Maxivista, its got several features of particular merit, the ability to use another laptop/desktop as an extended display for your main computer and in another mode use the same mouse and keyboard to control several computers, with monitors using the network connection for them to talk to each other. This is accomplished simply by dragging the mouse off the side of the screen at which point it appears on the other computer, the keyboard follows the mouse. Its probably easiest to have a browse through the Desktop Extension and Remote Control sections of the Maxivista website to get a better idea what I’m talking about here. There’s also the obligatory open source offering called Synergy2 which sods law dictated that I would only discover after purchasing Maxivista!

Typically when I’m at my desk I have my main computer and my laptop next to it on a dock, with dual monitor on the desktop already I have a fair amount of real estate to work from (albeit not in quite the same league as Stefan Didak!). I might typically have two instances of Opera running, one on the laptop and one on the second desktop screen, using the primary screen as my working area and the other two as reference windows, the key point however is that I prefer to use the laptop in remote control mode so that I can take advantage of its processor and resources while the main computers working on other things.

Anyway, heres the point of the post (finally I know): in this sort of set-up I’ve found its useful at times to be able to “transfer” tabs, between the browser windows on the two machines and it took me a while to work out how, to be honest its really thanks to an Opera Watch post about opening tabs in firefox and ie that I got an idea for a slightly bodged but workable solution. I thought I’d share it below in case anyone else finds it useful, its nothing revolutionary but its useful all the same.

Requirements/how to:

• Two networked computers running Opera (obviously)
• For this to work both ways you will need the PsExec.exe file copied into the “c:\Windows\System32″ folder, you can the PsTools package from the sysinternals website, check against point 2 on this forum thread that everything is ready to go.
• Download this batch file (zipped), extract and open it and change all the parts marked <ike this> to the appropriate values, note that the remote computers username should be the same as the one you logon as otherwise it’ll open a fresh opera window instead of using the existing one. Save the batch file to “c:\Windows\System32″
• Drag the below Opera button to any opera panel, click and it should work!

Things to note, you will get a console window opening for a second on the source computer, without compiling everything into a binary there’s little way of totally hiding the action, also, the above button is set to also remove the tab from the source computer.

I’ve found a couple of apps in the last week which have in different ways changed the way I use my computer (these are Windows only, sorry others!):

Maxivista

I have three computers on my desk when I’m at home, my laptop and two desktops (one recent aquisition which I’m not entirely sure what to do with at the moment). I’m writing this on the screen connected to the second desktop, however the mouse and keyboard are connected to the first desktop. If I want to control the laptop or the other desktop I just move the mouse over from one screen to the other. Maxivista does two things, it either allows you to turn any spare PC into a second monitor for the first or to remote control the second computer by simply moving the mouse to that screen as I am at the moment.

Its easily the coolest program I’ve found this year and has changed the way I use the computers, no more messing around with KVM’s, Maxivista only needs the network connection, wireless or wired it working fine for me over both. I found this via Stefan Didak’s website, a guy who has a comupter setup which rivals anything I’ve seen anywhere else and is well worth a look at.

There is also an open source version of this called Synergy2 which will work across platforms, I discovered this after finding and purchasing Maxivista, however after both myself and Tom used it we both found it to be a bit buggy but it might work for you.

Novell Netdrive

Not as interesting as the above one but non the less very useful. Novell Netdrive can connect to HTTP and FTP servers, Webdav and iFolder’s and add these as drives in My Computer. Fairly simple in many ways but very useful for website editing etc when having multple files open simultaneously and live on the website can be useful. This is unfortunatly something which isn’t available on the Novell website for copyright reasons, but a look around on Google will find you a download site. And no, this is not the same as mapping a drive in Windows XP as was mentioned when engadget covered this a couple of years ago (yup its not a new app by any means), the functionality it offers especially for doing backups is much improved on what Windows can do on its own.

On another note I’ve removed Lifehacker from my bloglist, it got rather boring to read their ‘inside tips’ etc which I read a few hours earlier off the actual authors blog whether it be Google’s, TechCrunch or any of the many others, also incredibly annoying to find a blog which doesn’t allow people to comment unless they’re a member.