New to Multi-boxing

[Safearus]

Hello everyone,

I have a few basic questions.
Right now I am running on a new "rig" (computer) that's running a decient setup and I can easily run two instances of WoW at once. I've read a lot on these forums so far, however, right now I am rather flabbergasted at all the information that I have read.

Basically this is what I would like to ask:

1. What is the easiest method to keybind for multiple windows, I am aware there are multiple software options available, however I'm not able to really read into the pro's and con's of these options. Can anyone give me personal preference with reason?

2. Is it absolutely required that I clone my WoW install to another folder? (incase required PC-specs are listed directly below)

Rig:
- ASUS Crosshair III R.O.G. Motherboard
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 CPU @ 3.6Ghz Clock (all 4 cores)
- 4GB DDR3 Mushkin HP3 RAM (Dual-Channel kit) 9-timing
- nVidia GeForce 7300 GS (512MB) {Note: Awaiting GTX275 in shipping stage, will be in this week.}
- 1x 250GB SATA2 Seagate Barracuda HDD (O/S Drive)
- 1x WD Caviar Black 1TB SATA2 HDD (Storage Drive)
- Windows XP Pro 64-Bit

Again, thank you for the information in advance. It is GREATLY appreciated.

EDIT: Now that I think of it...

Addons Installed Include: Jamba, Advanced Trade Skill Window, Cartographer, FastQuest, Lightheaded, Gatherer, Macaroon!, QuestHelper, SellJunk, SlideBar(lib), SpartanUI, TomTom, TourGuide, WoW-Pro Horde Leveling

[alcattle]

1. There are 3 software programs that I know offer Trials, not sure about Keyclone. Try them out and see if you pick up the program quickly. They all have good and a few little things that can bug you.

2. I would not bother with multiple folders right now. Your rig is uber enough to handle 2 and might even run 5. I would get rid of half of your add-ons, they do the same things.

[Safearus]

I downloaded KeyClone to see if there was a Trial and that wasn't the case. I know of an application designed to do this for free, however it doesn't work with 64-Bit XP. At least I keep getting errors upon loading that designate this as the issue. Stupid hex code as an error B.S.
The reason I have multiple addons was mainly for solo playing. Depending on what I was doing specifically would give me reason to use certain Addons. I found that Cartographer didn't work well with TourGuide and TomTom didn't work well with QuestHelper nor did it give me all the information I wanted. So I do the latter and have all installed and have different configs for difference characters. I don't think anyone would use all of those addons simultaniously. However I'm sure you've heard the latter of that aswell.
Thanks for the information though :D

EDIT: For the time being I'll stick to Alt-Tab + rediculous macro configs, until I get a chance to test each of these programs.

[Khatovar]

I downloaded KeyClone to see if there was a Trial and that wasn't the case..

That "24 hour Trial" link on the main page of the Keyclone site isn't a trial?

http://www.solidice.com/keyclone/request_24hr_trial.html

[JackBurton]

1. I use isboxer
a. Dont need expensive keyboards but an extra monitor is helpful if you have more than two toons. This is for making sure follow didnt break, taking flight paths, quest turn ins etc.. It partitions your screens however you want. You can have one screen with 4 small slave views along the bottom. Or you can have a second screen with a 4 way grid for the slaves there.
b. it has native support for click aoe's. clicking on the spot on the masters screen will activate the aoe on the same spot on the slaves screen.
c. easy to learn hard to master. crawl walk run. you can use it for multiplexing (pushing the same key on other computers). Its actually fun tweaking your setup from time to time. Level up, gain a new spell. Change your spell lineup to integrate it into your team.
d. the programer himself gives live tech support chat. i've asked alot of questions.

2. Only need 1 wow folder with isboxer. isboxer will launch all 5 of your accounts for you. If you have any settings set wrong it will even ask you if you want to fix it for better FPS.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I use Octopus. It's free (WIN!) but it's also unsupported in case you have issues and isn't the most user-friendly if you're not willing to read the docs/wiki/tutorials on using. If you want the "Hi, I'm new and don't wanna bother with setting up complicated stuff" option, Keyclone is your answer.

To answer your question about cloning your WoW folder, most of us symlink our WoW DATA and Interface sub-folders to make the hard disk impact the smallest possible. Search around and you should find plenty of info on that.

Your system looks fine. Folks have run 5x WoWs on a laptop with similar specs.

Judging by your questions, there are a couple of things I think you'll probably want to note:


You'll want to refrain from running memory/CPU-intensive UI mods (like Auctioneer, Carbonite, Cartographer, QuestHelper, Gatherer, TourGuide, etc.) on your alts as the more you have running on them, the slower your system runs x4. You may have no issues but that's a good first thing to try to improve performance.
/console set MAXFPSBK 15
This command sets the framerate on your background window (i.e.: not the char you're "driving" with) to a max of 15, which prevents your PC from trying to drive everything at maximimum FPS, which would cause all of them to suffer performance loss. With this setting, your main will run nice and fast and your alts will run fast enough. ;)
NOTE: Keyclone, Octopus and some others automagically set this for you.
Make sure you assign your different WoWs to use either all 4 cores or, better yet, specifically assign 2 to the first 2 and 3 to the last 2. By default, WoW only uses the first two cores on a quad-core machine. This thread (http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=24156&highlight=affinity) and this thread (http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=18020&highlight=mask) talk about this setting.

Hope that gets you thinking about a few things. Happy boxing once your new GPU arrives! :)