Noffbaughs.net

I'm working from home (to avoid sliding death on the roads), using both my work laptop (12.1" screen, small keyboard, touchpad) and our nice Ubuntu desktop (22" monitor, wireless full-size keyboard, wireless mouse), and was considering hooking up the big keyboard and mouse to my laptop just for the day. Then I remembered Synergy.
Why have I never tried this??? Synergy lets you share a single keyboard and mouse across several (Windows/Linux/Mac) computers over a network. It absolutely rocks, especially with the QuickSynergy setup tool, which makes setting it up stupid easy*. On my Ubuntu machines, I installed both with a quick apt-get command (Applications > Add/Remove or Synaptic Package Manager would work just as well):
sudo apt-get install synergy quicksynergy
More in-depth installation instructions are at help.ubuntu.com. There's no noticeable delay
As all of the documentation warns you, the system has no built-in security, so it's fine for a protected home network but probably not for a coffee shop! I haven't found any downsides thus far - if the "server" computer is very busy, there can be a bit of slowness with mouse movement, but in general everything is very snappy with my two computers. It can handle up to four client computers, which would be very cool and a bit crazy!
* The stupid-easy setup goes like this: start QuickSynergy (Applications > QuickSynergy) on the "server" (the computer with the good keyboard and mouse), and fill in the computer name/hostname/IP address of the other computer(s) in their appropriate physical locations. In my case, the laptop is sitting to the right of the desktop's monitor, so I put the name in the "Right" box. Click the "Start" button on QuickSynergy, then minimize it. On the "client" machine(s), fire up QuickSynergy, click to the "Use" tab, and put the computer computer name/hostname/IP address in the "Server hostname/IP address" field, click Start, and minimize. Now move the server's mouse cursor off the right (left/top/bottom) side of the screen, and watch it appear on your other computer!