Differences between Multiplicity and Synergy?

I have used both for a very long time so I can give you a comparison...

Both share keyboard and mouse, and are reasonably easy to configure and run (though Multiplicity gets the nods over the long term).

I've found Multiplicity to be more reliable and better at recovering from a disconnected machine etc. - from either the client or server side.

Synergy is free and can be used on unlimited machines. Multiplicity is a bit pricey for something that only does one thing (though it does it well). You'll need Multiplicity Pro to work with more monitors/machines.

Both can copy and paste clipboard text/url, etc. But Multiplicity Pro adds file copying.

Synergy is no longer in active development and hasn't been updated in forever. Long standing bugs and feature requests seem to be dead. Multiplicity is still seemingly in active development with a recent bug fix just released.

I hope that helps. I used to use synergy for all my machines and now I use multiplicity pro for everything.

Another key difference is that Synergy is available for multiple platforms while Multiplicity is for Windows only.

I've used Multiplicity Pro since it came out and absolutely love it. But, I switched to a Mac late last year and now I'm forced to use Synergy, which is definitely harder to configure since there's no GUI. It's much flakier especially when a machine is under heavy CPU load. And, I miss file copy!!!

For Windows users, I think the price of Multiplicity Pro is well worth it.

Mac support is coming. Intel macs gummed up the works for a bit there. Multi is much smoother, the copy and paste works, and it gets updated often just to name some of the big ones.

and note that you can use both at the same time (though obviously not with the same two machines). What I have used it for was

(Mac OS X Laptop)<--synergy--(Primary PC)--multiplicity-->(Secondary PC)

The Primary PC shares it's keyboard and mouse using Multiplicity and the Mac laptop using Synergy. Since both programs activate based on cursor at edge of screen information, a setup like this works with no problems.

Even better, the Mac laptop dual boots into Vista, which runs Multiplicity just. This means I can always control the laptop from my primary keyboard and mouse no matter which OS the laptop is booted into. The toughest part was getting the synergy client to autoexecute under OS X. It was positive 1970's.... 8P