Synergy on Windows XP?

  1. stevebush408

    I must apologize for this in advance... I have never owned a non-Mac since my first original Mac in 1985, but a new consulting contract has required me to buy (and use!) a windoze xp box. I am sorry. My justification is, "I'm only in it for the money"!

    Well, at least I have iTunes running on it! But I haven't found a good way to control iTunes on it. I especially want three key features: a notification of new song starting (like the floater), a quick key to call up this floater at any time, and a quick key for "next" (since I generally operate in random shuffle) .

    So I'm looking for advice: can anyone recommend a synergy-like program that runs on XP and provides the above?

    May thanks in advance, Steve Bush.

  2. stevebush408

    Just discovered yahoo! widgets, has several itunes controllers. I almost like iTunes_Remote.widget, has text-to-speech announcement of each track (feature request for Synergy), but is clumsy and un-customizable. Other widgets have floaters but again very un-customizable. In particular, can't resize them for full song titles. Still looking. Synergy on Mac is far far more powerful than anything I've found so far for pc.

  3. Greg Hurrell

    I've opened a feature request in the database for the text-to-speech thing:

    https://wincent.dev/a/support/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=351

  4. stevebush408

    That is great, thanks!

    On my desktop, the Yahoo! "iTunes Remote" widget works alright. Can't configure what to display, and can't resize window, so only displays a small part of long song titles. And no ratings, comments, or anything other than title, artist and album. And only the first few chars of each if long. Sucks... Previous/next/pause/play/volume are all good, and a shuffle/non-shuffle toggle is good. Nothing else good to say about it. No hot keys. No configuration. Not in the same league as synergy, just a toy program. But at least it gives next/pause/play/volume, the basics I wanted.

    Speaking the titles is an unexpectedly awesome thing however. I've been travelling for a few days now with my laptop on the seat of the car and running iTunes out thru a cassette adaptor into my car stereo. With the lid closed and the screen off, it goes several hours on an old battery. Although I have a cig. lighter power cord for "long" trips, I haven't had to use it yet. It is surprisingly cool to have the songs announced, giveing me my own radio station which plays only my own CDs; awesome!

    But the voice is awful and the configuration possibilities are nill. If you implement this, please include these things (not in the Yahoo! widget):

    It speaks OVER the first few seconds of the track, so you can't hear the beginning of the track. I want to control when it speaks, for instance, to speak completely before playing the track so no interference, or possibly speak most of it before and then fade in the track, etc. (much like floater timing sliders now, with relative volumes of announcement vs song being like opacity). I also wish I could configure which fields it speaks and in what order. Also, this widget won't change to other voices, and PC voices are *awful*. Should at least allow config of which voice.

    I'm still looking for a better Windoze program. It is odd -- I've been told (by friends) that there is way more software for pc than mac. But all the software I've actually cared about, google searching for, turns up lots more mac than pc. .. Like iTunes control programs, album cover art searchers, etc...

  5. Greg Hurrell

    I've added your comments to that feature request in the database. They really belong there, because comments made here in the forums end up getting buried/lost and forgotten.

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