What you're looking at is actually nine computers: five Macs, three PCs and one Linux machine. (Check out the Flickr page, to see what's what.) According to its owner, it's all driven with one keyboard and mouse, and switches seamlessly between machines. Incredible.
Thinking about the cable management for this thing makes my head hurt.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
5-15-2008 @ 9:08AM
Craig L said...
Would this rig REALLY be productive.....
Imagine the daily maintenance - and the HEAT!
Reply
5-15-2008 @ 9:38AM
Antonio said...
Productivity be damned! I want one!
5-15-2008 @ 10:39AM
Costa Walcott said...
Exactly - Once you're above 3 monitors I can't imagine that adding more really brings up your productivity. It is neat to look at though :)
5-15-2008 @ 11:03AM
Blaktornado said...
If anything it's counter-productive because you have to keep turning around to look at the screens and everything :P
Unless you have a lot of apps that can maintain themselves and do their thing (say, lots of video apps that are constantly rendering) then it could be marginally productive but I don't see the point :P
One, two or three is enough. lol.
5-15-2008 @ 7:46PM
Tristan said...
I run 4 monitors (dual 24 and dual 17) and find it works EXTREMELY well. 1 x 17" runs mail, 1 x 17" has Adium and iTunes, 1 x 24 usually runs a browser and the last 24" runs whatever work I am doing at the time...
For what I do, the setup works perfectly, I have thought about going to a single 30", but being able to view all the apps I need to at once is priceless and I don't think the 30" could allow for this!
5-16-2008 @ 2:31AM
larry said...
@Tristan - are you able to run a full screen movie? I have an 8 monitor setup (4xGeForce 7300) and was never able to run a movie even on two of them.
5-15-2008 @ 9:19AM
Steven Ledbetter said...
From what I can tell, the set-up looks really clean. Very nice. I'm sure the eye strain could be killer after a while though.
Reply
5-15-2008 @ 9:33AM
Allan said...
If it's all run by 1 kb and mouse.... what's with the set on the left? If you go to the Flickr page, the kb on the right is labeled as the one he uses.
Reply
5-15-2008 @ 9:50AM
chris said...
My guess is he's using Synergy, a server-client setup that allows you to do this without KVMs...you can literally drag your mouse from one end of the setup to another, seamlessly. Very slick. I use it at work to drive a Mac mini, 2 linux boxes, and 2 W2k3 servers. Relatively easy to set up, but the traffic (keystrokes and mouse movement) is unencrypted by default - though you can set up an SSH tunnel to encrypt the traffic. My guess is the keyboard and mouse on the left is hooked to a KVM to all of them - Synergy can sometimes break on a restart, as not all of the clients have service-level runtime.
http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/
The clients all work well, but the Mac client SynergyKM ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/synergykm ) runs as a prefpane and is very slick.
Reply
5-15-2008 @ 9:57AM
Jonathan Wise said...
AOL on Synergy. I was going to mention this, but you beat me to the punch.
Anyone using multiple computers (of any modern OS) on one desk, should check out Synergy. Its fantastic.
5-15-2008 @ 9:52AM
Robert Debowski said...
I can have 16 of them. It's called Spaces™. And is greener btw.
Reply
5-15-2008 @ 10:34AM
Aron T said...
TUAW seriously needs to a write-up on setting this up using Synergy2 on Windows and SynergyKM on OS X.
I have never even heard of this application but now that I've figured out how to set it up I'm going to be using it at work constantly!
Reply
5-15-2008 @ 11:15AM
RJ said...
Synergy is pretty slick...but has one bug (maybe a bug, maybe that's how it should be):
If your synergy server is a windoze box, everytime one of the applications hang - roughly every 10 mins if you're running more than 2 apps like outlook or internet explorer, then the synergy clients start erroring out. The trick in a total Windoze setup is to run it on a machine you'll run light apps. In this case, it's likely the synergy server is a mac (one app hang does not crap out every app for a bit) or a linux box.
Reply
5-15-2008 @ 12:16PM
ultrasur1 said...
"hey everybody look at me!"
see you in ten years when your radiation levels are peaking...
Reply
5-15-2008 @ 12:25PM
Ryan Trevisol said...
I'm thinking you could do this with one or two maxed-out mac pros and VMWare. It'd be sexier. :-p
Reply
5-15-2008 @ 1:21PM
Codey H. said...
Farming Gold on WoW probably...
Reply
5-15-2008 @ 1:53PM
Ryan said...
and the purpose of this rig? Is he homeland security or is he running the Matrix?
Reply
5-15-2008 @ 3:32PM
Matt said...
I'm gonna guess he drives six Hummers all with one gas pedal as well. Way to go, overcompensating individual.
Reply
5-15-2008 @ 5:47PM
Travis Isaacs said...
...and not a girl to be found. Girls love dudes with setups like this.
Reply
5-15-2008 @ 8:02PM
robogobo said...
wow. I don't know what to say. That's about the most wasteful thing I can imagine in a single room.
Reply