Second day working from home.  With my laptop sitting on the same desk my existing pc, it has become a exercise in coordination.  I've hooked up an external mouse because who can use the silly laptop pad or stubby knob in the IBM laptops.  It's for portable use only, like in airports, it's not meant for serious desktop use.

So on my home PC I'm listening to tunes through Pandora, running a web browser displayed on my home monitor.  And down on the desktop of got the laptop open.  Sitting there are two mice, one for the home pc, another for the laptop, the home pc keyboard and ahhh...

There's got to be a better way.

First I thought a KVM switch.  I could use 1 monitor, keyboard and mouse and switch between the two pc's.  But that seems really old school.  It uses hardware.  Can't I emulate this stuff?

Ah hah.  How about terminal services/remote desktop?  Why not just connect to my laptop with my home pc and run the laptop like a black box that could sit anywhere in the house connected to the network?  Ok so that's what I did.

First we have to enable Remote Desktop in Vista (that's right - I'm trying to use Vista for work).

Apparently you cannot use the Network Level Authentication from a Windows XP machine.  It's Vista only.  So it means you must select the less secure method.  If you're doing Vista to Vista then choose the more secure option.

Now we can connect from the Windows XP machine.  Easiest way is Start --> Run --> mstsc

Then enter the remote computer name you want to connect to and log in.  There you have it.

Another thought I had was the programmers bill of rights and multiple monitors.  At least two, preferable three.  Can this even be done with terminal services?

Apparently it can.

mstsc /span

This MS KB article states it can be done but that you're limited to 4096 x 2048.  Essentially two monitors.

I have yet to test it out since I'm only a 1 monitor guy at home.  That's going to be remedied here shortly.

Later.