Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Scott Hanselman's annual list of developer and power user tools for Windows is just out, and there are a lot of good tools in there - many of which I use every day. They range from memory joggers and notetakers to DOS emulators and deep debugging tools.

It's one of those lists that every time you look at it, you'll find something more and something that solves one of those nagging little issues (like the application that take a screenshot of your desktop every hour or so, so you can remember just what you were doing when...).

There's one area where Scott doesn't have some of the problems I have - working with more than one machine at a time. I try to keep distractions off my main screen when I'm working, so I have a laptop on an old monitor stand on my desk. I can just pull it out to type on when I need it. These days, however, I don't even need to do that.

A software keyboard mouse switch does the work for me, and all I need to do is slide my mouse of the side of one screen, onto another - in fact on to another machine. I'm currently on my third tool of this type. I started out with Synergy, but the project started lagging OS development and there hasn't been a new build for years. Then I switch to Multiplicity, but it too drifted off into the realms where updates are few and far between.

So I'm now using Input Director, which is one of those Ronseal applications, that just does what it says on the tin. It's easy to set up, easy to use, and works well with Windows 7.

That's me happy.