Giant Ginkgo

Teleport is a new piece of software for Mac OS X that enables local "remote" control of other Panther equipped Macintoshes. I have my Powerbook on the table next to my main machine's keyboard and display, and if I want to access it all I have to do is move the mouse off of the display and onto the other machine. It behaves exactly as if I was running a duel monitor Mac, except I can't drag windows and objects between the two machines. (Cut and Paste does work though...) It installs as a preference pane, making it easy to locate at any time.

The funny thing about this software was that I was talking to a friend a couple of weeks ago about Rendezvous, and how much I would love to be able to use the same keyboard and mouse on both of my computers. It seemed obvious that using Rendezvous's auto-discovery combined with a multiple-monitor approach to handling the back and forth would be ideal. Simple and intuitive to use... And now it is here!

As beta software, it still has some issues. I've had it get stuck on one side or the other, if a big and processor-intensive app gets in the way (Photoshop, for instance). It also needs to behave more like the multiple monitor display preference pane, the edges of the screens should snap to the next location. The lack of encryption will definitely stop me from using it on an open network too. But overall, this is a great start, and it is a real life saver. It also should update the background image for each screen (the trees below were the background when I first enabled it), and it should copy the background thumbnails from the other computers over to make it more visually intuitive.