Do you use multiple computers on or near your desk? Constantly switching between the two? Then Input Director might just what your looking for. This great little program allows you to use the mouse and keyboard on your main computer for your secondary computers. This is brilliant for many situations including when you have a computer for work and one for play, you can easily switch between the two. Or you can put your laptop next to your computer and use it for secondary task such as browsing, chat, downloads/torrents etc. while using your main computer to do your design work in Photoshop or play that game while still being in touch with everything else to your side. It’s as easy as moving your mouse to the edge of your screen and it will seamlessly appear on your secondary computer!

Features:

• Works on any Windows computer
  (Windows 2000 (Service Pack 4), Windows XP (Service Pack 2), Windows 2003 or Windows Vista)
• Easy setup
• FREE for personal non-commercial use
• Small footprint (efficient)

Well enough reasons as to why this so great, I’m sure you just want to know how to set it up!

1. First thing to do is go to www.inputdirector.com. Download the latest version (currently it’s 1.2) to both of your computers
2. Extract “InputDirector.v1.2.Setup.exe” from the zip file you just download and run it. Follow the prompts to install
3. Now before we continue there are some details you’re going to need to get before we can go on. The info we needed is the ip address’s of the computers that we’re going to run this program on. To do this just right click the internet icon on the bottom right of the task bar. Below an image of the icons in XP and Vista, the one you select depends on if you’re connected via wireless or cable. Now the instructions differ slightly depending on your OS.

1. XP: Once you have right clicked, select “Open Network Connections”. Find your connection (Normally called “Local Area Connection” or “Wireless Network Connection”), right click it and hit status. Up to the top will be two tabs, General and Support. Click Support and it will show you your details including the computers ip. Take note of the computer and it’s ip.
2. Vista: Right click your icon on the task bar and hit “Network and Sharing Center”. Click on “View status” (see image below). If you press the first button called “Details…” you will see you ip address next to the property “IPv4 IP Address”. Should be the fifth one down on the list.
   

** Please note that if you have DCHP enabled on your router, every time you restart your computer or router it’s going to give you a new ip each time. This may or may not be the same as last time and therefore you either need to check the ip address’s for each computer every time you restart your computers or manually assign ip address’s to them. This is beyond the scope of this tutorial but if request may write up a how-to guide if there is a demand.

*** Note you can use the computer’s name instead of ip also although I have not tested this.

1. You should now have an icon on your desktop after the install. Hit that up on your main pc to get Input Director running.
2. Once you see the Input Director screen on your main computer make sure this is the main computer then click the “Enable Master” button. Then go to the “Master Configuration” tab, just to the right of your current tab. Press the “Add” button and enter your secondary computer’s name in the “Hostname” box. Leave the port as default and press ok. Above now you should see two computers, one named Master System and the other will have an ip as its name. Click and hold the screens and move to the correct side to match your physical position of your computers.
3. Now go to your secondary computer, install the program and open it. Just like before press the enable button but make sure you press the slave one “Enable as Slave”.

That’s it, you’re all done! Just move the mouse to the side of your other computer and it should slide right across. Drop me a comment below if you have any thoughts or questions.