Day: December 5, 2005

Aside from the inane menu trees and the long wait times, nothing annoys me more than when I call a company for technical support and they try to sell me crap I don’t need during the call.

There are two companies this happens with pretty much every time I call them — Charter Communications (my cable company) and SBC.

With Charter, for example, I have had to call them a few times because there is a problem with my Internet access. It is apparently an actual physical problem with the cable that runs up to my house. Every single time I call them for technical support, the support people walk me through a scripted bit of nonsense where they’re trying to convince me to upgrade my cable package. Wouldn’t you like this set of channels? (No). Or wouldn’t you like a Charter DVR? (Not unless you’re putting DVD-Rs in them).

SBC was even worse. I made the mistake of getting an SBC line for my grandmother when she was in a nursing home. They moved her bed shortly after the line was installed and I had to have the line moved from one room to another. Despite a month of calls SBC never could be bothered to move the phone line, but every time I called about the lack of technical support I was receiving, the company thought this would be a good time to ask me to upgrade all the services on the line.

I’d explain up front that I was the grandson calling about a phone line in a nursing home, but the service reps would always try to sell me on high speed Internet (umm, we’re talking about an incapacitated 80 year old here — no thanks). Or 3-way calling in case Grandma needed to take a meeting.

I have a theory that the point in both cases is to annoy customers to the point that they simply stop calling customer service. It worked at SBC, as I finally gave up on the idea that they were actually going to be helpful.

Please, if I’m calling you because something isn’t working, don’t see that as another opportunity for a sales pitch.

Stardock’s Multiplicity is essentially a software KVM that lets you control two computers using just one keyboard and mouse. There are plenty of KVM switches that let you do this, but the beauty of Multiplicity is that it does this in software with multiple computers that are on the same network.

For example, I downloaded the trial version of the software and installed it on my main gaming machine and on my laptop. I was playing WoW on the gaming machine and had a browser session opened on the laptop. With Multiplicity running on both machines, when I moved the cursor off the left hand side of my main machine, it would show up on my laptop and I could use the mouse and keyboard to Google where I needed to go to finish a particular quest.
Once I had the answer, I just dragged the cursor to the far right of the laptop screen, and I was back on my WoW machine.

My laptop was connected via wireless, but the response from the keyboard and mouse felt instantaneous.

There is also a shared clipboard between the machines, and the Pro Version allows for file transfers between connect machines. The Pro Version allows the user to control up to six computers this way.

The installation was pretty straightforward, and there are security features such as the ability to require a password to connect to other machines as well as an optional feature that restricts connections to computers on the local network.

Multiplicity is a bit pricey at $39.95 for the basic version and $69.95 for the pro version — and you’ll need one copy of the software an each computer you plan to use (in contrast, you can buy 4-port KVM switches for under $100).

Personally, the experience was so cool I know I’ll be purchasing a couple licenses.