Ahhh... There's nothing better than finding a piece of software that makes it's way into my daily use immediately. Ok, maybe there's a few things better, but it's still extremely satisfying to find a software solution, install it, and watch a problem go away. It also gets bonus points for solving problems you didn't even KNOW you had, or for just providing additional cool and useful functionality. Microsoft had a busy forth quarter of '08 introducing a number of products in beta, and many of them are emerging now. One I think you'll be hearing more about is Windows Live Sync (http://sync.live.com), and if you work on several machines around the house, in the office, or both, I highly recommend you check this out.
Windows Live Sync is a free service from Microsoft that runs on a MAC or PC (or both) gives you the ability to synchronize the contents of multiple folders between two or more internet connected machines. The synchronization can be either on demand or continuous, and once established, synchronization happens almost immediately. Better yet, LiveSync allows you to remotely access the contents of these machines (assuming they're connected) from any other internet connection. If you choose, you can offer that same access to selected friends (via invitations) which can be a handy way to pass files too large for email (and potentially violate your company's corporate policy in the process - so check first).
This tool is perfect for synchronizing your photo or music collection for instance - allowing you to add photos on any available machine and have those photos automatically synced up together into 2 unified libraries. If you do some retouching on a photo on one machine, those changes are immediately synchronized back without thinking about it. LiveSync also works perfectly to synchronize documents between your laptop and desktop, and you'll always have the latest copy with you - or at least accessible. Employees who have both home offices and work machines (assuming your company permits it) can keep work and home documents in both places - and access them wherever they need to be. And it's incredibly comforting knowing that a web-based interface to your files is available should something happen to your current copy (like a laptop crash.. before a presentation... naah.. that never happens!)
Live Sync is based on some technology Microsoft purchased a few years ago called "Foldershare" and has been improved a good deal since then. Still, it's not without it's limitations and gotchas. According to Microsoft, you can sync up to 20 folders (which can contain sub-folders) and each folder can have no more than 20,000 items. It also will not synchronize files over 4GB in size. In practice, I haven't found either of these to be much of a limitation.
I also recommend you resist the temptation to simply point both sides at the "My Documents" folder and let it rip. For starters, that approach simply won't work in some situations - like when synchronizing between an XP machine and a Vista machine, owing to a difference in some of the naming conventions used by both. Attempting a full "My documents" sync will also begin to swap items and folders that should remain unique to each machine or which could potentially cause issues - like offline email folders, and certain application settings. However, by creating a specific folder within "My Documents" for syncing purposes (I called mine "1_SyncedItems" to keep the name at the top) and working there, you can be sure that only the documents you want to keep replicated will be copied.
Remember too that this is "Synchronization" - not necessarily backup, so mistakes, deletes, renames etc count as changes. If you delete a file on one side, in a few moments it's going to be deleted on the other - so think quickly during those moments of "I-didn't-just-do-that" and disable sync in the task bar tray. With any luck, you can use LiveSync to connect remotely to the remote machine, find the file, bring it back, and be in business without much effort. In case you can't tell, I HAVE done this, but you must act quickly. It'd be nice to seem Microsoft offer a user-selectable time delay on replication.
Of course, it wouldn't be Microsoft without some other bizarre confusion thrown in. LiveSync won't sync with network storage devices, even if those devices are mapped to a drive letter on one of the machines. It also will not Sync to Microsoft's Skydrive free web-based storage - again - for reasons that are not all clear. And further confusion reigns when you start comparing this to another Microsoft product - Windows Live "MESH" - a product that APPEARS to do the same thing as LiveSync, plus a few more things like actual remote access (go-to-my-pc) style. Allegedly this is a bit of internal competition at Microsoft and the functionality will all settle out into one product eventually. I'll write more about that when it does.
For now, it works as advertised and I find it extremely valuable. Go sync yourself!
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