Every now and then you come across an idea in computing that raises the bar in terms of what you think is possible.
A few years ago I found myself with two laptops in my home office, along with a single keyboard, HD monitor and mouse. So I went out to see if I could buy a suitable KVM switch in my local computer shops but I had no luck. In any event, my old laptop was VGA and my new one was HDMI so both could connect to the monitor at the same time already.
And then I discovered the software KVM. What a fantastic idea!
Basically you can simply move your mouse pointer from one monitor to the other (as you do with dual monitors on a single computer) and the keyboard and mouse activity are redirected to the other computer. Genius!
I never got to try it though because I ended up giving my old laptop to my eldest daughter at about that time.
Some of the free products that offer this capability are:
An impressive aspect of Synergy is that it is cross platform, so you could have a mix of computers running Windows, OS X and Linux.
Some of them have options to ensure that you do not transition to another system by accident. For example, you might specify that you must press a specific key to perform the transition.
And as if all of that wasn't clever enough, all of them support copy and paste between machines!
I guess the day will come when you will be able to move your mouse onto your iPad, your Smartphone, and your Smart TV is the same fashion!