"When developing large-scale multiplayer games like the games in the Battlefield series, it is often essential to have more than one machine at your disposal. Multiplicity Pro eliminates the often disruptive distraction of having to remember which keyboard and mouse belongs to which screen and enables a much more seamless workflow, with complete focus on the problems we're here to solve." - Stefan Boberg , Leading Programmer , Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment.

"Developing next-generation games can be very complex and the number of tools and applications involved are often more than would be practical on a single desktop. For many of our artists and programmers at Ensemble Studios, Multiplicity Pro fits the bill for harnessing the power of several computers into a single and united workspace with a single mouse and keyboard. The ability to copy and paste images, text, files and folders between separate computers sharing that unified desktop is an invaluable asset in cutting-edge games development." - Chris Van Doren, Technical Artist, Ensemble Studios.

Multiplicity Pro, ultimately, is designed primarily for users who want to increase their productivity.

Multiplicity Pro requires a second computer with its own monitor. Therefore, it is fair to ask, why not just beef up your existing computer with more memory and maybe another processor if possible? The reason is that no matter how much hardware you add to a single computer, it is still a single computer. The OS will eventually get bogged down. There are times when the OS just can’t be responsive no matter how many processors are in the machine.

The “power user” or administrator who has a very powerful single machine with multiple monitors still won’t be able to do as much as the Multiplicity Pro user who has those same two monitors split up between machines.

Moreover, these days it’s becoming common for a user to have an “older” PC lying around. This machine can put under your desk and an inexpensive monitor connected to it and now you have increased your computing power. You don’t have the same obsolescence issues that SMP boxes have with Multiplicity Pro.

VNC, Remote Desktop, etc. are designed to allow a user to remote control another computer. That computer’s screen shows up on your existing screen.

Multiplicity Pro isn’t designed to be used instead of a remote control program. Remote control programs are for a different purpose – controlling computers that are in a remote location.

Even if one did set up VNC or some other package to control a second machine and have its display on a secondary monitor, you are still going to have latency in drawing. By contrast, with Multiplicity Pro, the display is connected directly to that secondary machine. So there’s no lag. You could, for instance, play two video games (one on each computer) at the same time with Multiplicity Pro. There’s no performance impact at all.

KVM switches are where different monitors are connected to a switch. A single keyboard and mouse then can be used to switch which computer is displayed on a single monitor.

Like the previous example, KVM switches are for a different market (and require a hardware purchase). They are designed for network administrators who want to access multiple computers and save physical desk space in the process.

Multiplicity Pro, by contrast, is designed so that the computers in that office would be used together. The KVM switch would have a single monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Multiplicity Pro requires that each computer have its own monitor so that are working with your computers at once.

What ultimately makes Multiplicity Pro special is the ease of setup, reliability, and seamlessness of it. It has been designed specifically so that users of all skill levels and install it and quickly be using multiple computers together with a single keyboard and mouse.

Stardock developed Multiplicity Pro after observing more and more businesses and individuals upgrading their “old” 1GHz level computers to the “new” 3.x GHz level computers. The old computers were still very usable for a wide variety of tasks. But few people have the desk space or the desire to have several keyboard and mice littering the desktop.

Moreover, even if the user was willing to put up with more than 1 keyboard and mouse on the desktop, there is still the problem of using the computers together. How do you get a file from one machine to another? Copying to Network shares? That’s time consuming and tedious. And what if you just want to copy an image, screenshot, URL, whatever to the other computer? That’s where Multiplicity Pro was born.