I often give presentations using a laptop and a projector. What I usually do is not control the laptop directly, but connect to it via a remote desktop utility (like Teamviewer or RealVNC) from my desktop computer, so that I can sit at my desk while giving the presentation. The problem is that when I want to display videos, a significant effect of page tearing occurs.

Now, since I don't need to see the desktop of my laptop (becuse I see it projected on the screen), all I need is the ability to send remote keyboard and mouse commands from my desktop computer to my laptop. Is there a program that will allow me to remote control my laptop without having to display its desktop on the remote computer?

Thanks for any help.

Welcome ZCochrane! Interesting question.

Is your desk beyond the normal reach of a wireless Keyboard & Mouse that you might connect directly to the laptop?

I'll mark your thread as OPEN for others to join in the fun.

Thanks for your answer!
And yup.. unfortunately it is! It's one of those long and narrow conference rooms with a table running along it. My desk is at one extremity and the projections screen is at the other.

A an alternative solution, I was thinking that maybe I could use a remote desktop utility that will not display on the remote computer anything drawn by the Windows component that draws the video stream, so that such stream would only be displayed on the local (the laptop's) screen (ie. projector). But I'm not sure anything like that exists... nor I know if in fact the video stream and the regular desktop elements (eg. icons and windows) are drawn by different components. I'm at loss.

Ok, thanks

Hi ZCochrane - Welcome to PCHF!!!

You can try using RADMIN. They have a free 30 day trial on their website so you test it out and see if it's better.

You can control how many times it updates per second and also the colour depth so you don't have the graphics coming through at high quality. If you just need to be able click things this would probably better.

PC Remote Control Software and Remote Access Software: Control Remote PC Securely, Transfer Files, Share Remote Desktop, Access Remote PC from Anywhere, Perform System Administration

Thanks for your reply, DIIRE.
After some research, I discovered the concept of "Virtual KM Switch". Which is exactly what I was looking for!
It acts as a KVM Switch, and allows to move to mouse pointer from one computer to another. First you configure client and server programs by telling them the relative positions of the screens (eg. the screen of computer FOO is on the left of the screen of computer BAR). Then, moving the cursor to the right edge of server computer FOO will cause the client program running on BAR to capture the input from the server. Once the cursor is "captured" by the other computer, keyboard events will also be sent to it.

In my case, I'll have to configure the program so that the projection screen is "above" my desk's computer screen, which, being partly true, should be intuitive enough..

For now, I've found one freeware program that implements this, it's called Synergy.

I hope this can help other people too.

Would you like me to mark this as fixed?

Would the thread still be open? I wouldn't mind hearing other opinions and/or suggestions, or if someone else knows about other softwares which implement the same principle

If the "fixed" tag leaves the thread open, please do go ahead and mark it as Fixed.