Using A Laptop as KVM Head?

Dune asks: "I tote around a nice laptop all day and then have to sit down in front of a lot of different boxes. I'd love to be able to use my laptop as a KVM head. Has anyone every seen something that would allow this? Maybe a USB device which has keyboard, video and mouse cables to plug into a box (or KVM switch)? With a corresponding app/driver of course..." My first knee-jerk answer to this question was "maybe VNC would work", and while that will let you log in and get you a desktop with which you could use the machine, it's only a hack and not a true KVM head, which would show you exactly the same thing that's on the console. Could VNC possibly be hacked to serve this purpose? Of course, and I'm sure that many people would be interested in such if someone knows how to do it. However I'm wondering if someone out there has already developed (or is working on) a better solution?

I should make a caveat to this: The Windows98 VNC server will export the current user's desktop to the internet. So some of you windows users can do this already. Warning: Those of you who do, should look into extra security for your desktop, especially if it has an internet connection.

Comments

VNC or Terminal Server are your best choices

[jefflinwood]

VNC is free, runs on a lot of different platforms for both client and server, and is pretty transparent. I've thought about trying to simplify my computers down to one laptop that can control the other computers from anywhere at my house with 802.11b.