Bonjour, or I switch yet more.

I was so happy to get all my photos off my laptop, I wondered how much more responsibility I could shed from it. My setup was the mini with its own kb and mouse and a few peripherals, and my laptop, with its own external kb and mouse and printer, and another laptop. All hooked up through Synergy and SynergyOSX. So my main laptop was the Synergy server, and the mac and other laptop were its clients. That’s why the mac needed its own separate keyboard and mouse, for when the laptop was not plugged in.

So yesterday I did some messing around. My goal was to have nothing connected to the laptop except a power cord and ethernet cable. I made the mac the Synergy server, and both laptops clients. That worked great and allowed me to get rid of one keyboard and mouse. Now I just had to move the printer over. I hooked up the printer to the mac and got it running but I couldn’t print to it from either laptop. I’d actually tried this before and wound up slinking away defeated. I knew it must be possible though. After some more searching, I found Bonjour for Windows. Looked promising. Downloaded, installed, ran the Bonjour printer wizard. It found the printer on the mac, set it up and voila! My laptop is free of all its USB shackles. Furthermore, I can sit here in the kitchen with my laptop and print a document in my office via the wireless connection!

I just have one remaining problem. Maybe I can solve it today. It’s the Num-Lock. Just ain’t working on the PCs while the mac is the Synergy server. There are some settings in Synergy – half-duplex for Num-Lock that are supposed to solve this, but no luck. My numeric keypad remains a cursor navigation pad only. I have some ideas…