On my main workstation, I have two 24″ displays. Why two? Well, there is one right in front of my face, which is connected to my MacBook running Snow Leopard. This is my main machine at the moment.

On the left, my Windows 7 workstation. I usually keep stuff on this screen that I don’t need in front of me – like my security camera feed, and Sirius Radio online.

I switch between the two systems with a fantastic piece of free software known as Synergy. I run the Synergy server on the MacBook, and the Synergy client on the Windows machine.

They connect to each other over the network, and when I move my mouse to the edge of my primary monitor, it just keeps going onto the other screen, and the keyboard and mouse control is transferred to the Windows box seamlessly. Its amazing how well it works.

There are a couple of gotchas – the mouse and keyboard aren’t enabled as a security issue for UAC and login screens under Windows. I usually keep an additional mouse and keyboard connnected off to the side for these. Another option is to turn off password login and disable UAC (at your own risk).

For 11 years I have tried several different KVM switches, and I hate them all.

1. They are expensive (especially if they don’t come with the special cabling!).
2. They double your cabling mess.
3. Their reliability for any given setup is all over the map, especially if a Linux or FreeBSD computer is in the mix. As such, reviews and reccommendations aren’t always helpful.
4. You don’t know if they are going to work well with your systems until you spend the money and do a lot of cabling.
5. You can’t use both systems at the same time, which is usually better.
6. Even if everything works, sometimes its difficult to get a KVM into your workflow.
7. You will have to make some decisions about whether you are going to have audio support, DVI-D support.

KVM switches were more attractive when old CRT displays were big and expensive, and OS’s had sketchy multiple monitor support. For some developers and IT folks, they may still serve a specific setup, but in general, they are to be avoided.

24-inch LCD monitors are down to $200, which is just amazing. I bought my first for probably $1200, but it was still an outstanding investment in productivity.

So, for sharing two systems, having them on 2 monitors side by side with Synergy is hard to beat, and much cheaper and more reliable than older KVM methods.

As for using 2 monitors with one system, Windows 7 is outstanding, better than Vista or Snow Leopard. Both monitors are usually setup automatically, although you may need to tell Windows which monitor is on which side, and which side you want to be your primary (the one with the start menu and taskbar).

Better yet, if you *disconnect* one of the monitors, Windows 7 is really good about switching your primary to the existing display on the fly and ‘doing the right thing’ about moving windows that were open on other screens to the main.

Snow Leopard is not so great about this, which is surprising, especially when it comes to MacBooks. People use an additional monitor with notebooks more than they do with desktops – many get to work, plug into a bigger monitor and external keyboard and mouse to enhance usability.

If you plug an external monitor into a MacBook, it will add additional ’spaces’, and since the resolution of your MacBook and monitor may not be the same, the resolution of these spaces will be different. I don’t like the way this works at all, and usually want to turn off the MacBook’s screen, which is not as straightforward as it should be.

Two other great reasons for avoiding KVM switching are also fairly new developments – virtualization and remote access software. Both have been around for a while, but only recently have they become more usable, higher-performance, and affordable.

Virtualization is the running of on OS as an application under another OS. VMWare Fusion for Mac, for example, allows you to install a Windows ‘Virtual Machine’ on you Mac OS you can startup, run, suspend, and shutdown at any time. It works great.

For a while, it required a lot of memory and some decent processor and video power to have a good experience with Virtualization, but the software and hardware support for Virtual Machines has improved a great deal.

The downside is that because of Apple’s insistence that Mac OS only be run on Apple computers, you cannot, in general, run Mac OS as a virtual machine under Windows or Linux (although I’m sure someone has gotten this to work).

I especially recommend Virtual Machines for people who want to try out Linux. Linux runs great as a virtual machine under Windows or Mac OS, and can be tricky to setup on bare hardware.

Remote access is another option for using two systems at once. Snow Leopard comes with remote access (aka Screen Sharing on Mac OS) built-in, as does Windows 7 Professional and above (where its known as Remote Desktop or RDC).

Windows 7 Home Premium and below does not support Windows Remote Desktop, which is criminal. Windows uses this feature as the main carrot on the end of the stick for users to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional for $89 more. There really is no other reason why a home user would need that upgrade.

Unfortunately, accessing Snow Leopard’s screen from Windows requires a VNC client that has been tweaked a bit. The other way around is much easier – Microsoft publishes a full-featured remote desktop client for Macs.

Side note: Windows 7 adds some really impressive features to RDC.

Another option for remote access is cross-platform remote access software like VNC, or service-based software like GoToMyPC or LogMeIn.com.

There is one problem with these solutions is that none of them work over the Internet out of the box, they only work with other computers on your local network.

All of them can work over the internet, but to do so in most cases will require that you have a static IP address or Dynamic DNS, and configure your router settings for port forwarding (if you can’t configure your router, you will have to tunnel it through SSH). This stuff is required for VNC internet access also.

Personally, I do not recommend port forwarding as a good solution for remote internet access. This is because if you update or change settings on your router, computer, firewall, anti-virus, LAN IP addressing, or dynamic DNS, your remote access can break, and you usually won’t find this out until you need it.

MobileMe has a feature called Back To MyMac which allows you to use Screen Sharing over the internet without this fuss.

My #1 recommendation for internet remote access is definitely the LogMeIn.com service. It works with PC and Mac, you do not need to have client software installed on the client computer, its free, secure, has tons of features and is very reliable.

You just sign up, install the software on each machine you want to access, and you’re done. When you want to connect to one of your computers, you just open any browser on any machine to LogMeIn.com, and you will be provided with a list of your computers indicate which are online.

When you click on a remote computer you want to use, a Java-based client will open on the local computer very quickly with no need for admin access or changes to the guest. You will be prompted for the login info for the remote machine, and the screen of that machine will magically appear.

Performance is surprisingly good and very usable, and like most remote access solutions you can adjust resolution, color depth, and other settings based on the quality of the connection.

If you upgrade to a LogMeIn premium account, you can do more cool things like transfer files easily to the remote machine, which is extremely helpful and a critical feature Apple and Microsoft have never understood in their remote clients.

The problem is that when it comes to file sharing, Windows and MacOS have complex and secure systems for that. To just be able to drag and drop files between computers with only remote access authentication would seem to circumvent that. At least, that’s what I think their rationale for not enabling it is.

From a security standpoint, however, its kind of irrelevant. I can FTP, email, or ssh my files off the remote system from the desktop remotely at will. Enabling file transfer right in the remote desktop software doesn’t circumvent anything but inconvenience. It should definitely at least be an option in the server software install.

Prior to using LogMeIn.com, I used GoToMyPC for years. Its a very similar service, and has been around longer than LogMeIn.com. I haven’t compared them lately, but I switched as LogMeIn.com was free and supported Mac hosts when GoToMyPC did not.

However, GoToMyPC always worked like a champ for me, and its an outstanding product, so be sure to check out both of their current offerings before deciding which is best for you. Hard to go wrong with just trying LogMeIn free, however.

I should also note that both of these services are considered extremely secure and I have never been aware of them being compromised.