Windows Live Sync

The Dilemma

It has become much more common in this modern era of computing for a person to own more than one computer. Probably the most common scenario is a user owning a laptop as well as a desktop. They may prefer the laptop for its mobile computing convenience while preferring the desktop for its more comfortable long-term computing experience. One of the biggest problems with this scenario is that when you work with data on one computer, it’s seemingly a headache to transfer any changes you made quickly and automatically to the other computer.

While there do exist ways to transfer documents back and forth (e-mailing yourself the document as an attachment, using Windows Live Skydrive (or a similar cloud-based file/folder storage solution, such as Box.net), or using a USB flash drive to transfer the files), they all suffer from severe limitation: you must remember to manually transfer the file every time you plan on using the other computer. Thus, before running out to a coffee shop with your laptop, you must transfer each and every file you think you might need before leaving your office or home. Not only is this cumbersome, but it is also time-consuming and tedious. And heaven help you if you forget to do a file!

Not only is the manual nature of these methods problematic, but some of these methods are unsuitable for transferring more than a few files. E-mailing yourself twenty files (and then downloading them later) regularly is far too cumbersome to be done on a daily (or even a weekly) basis. The time this would take makes it simply unacceptable.

How, then, should we keep our files in sync with the two computers while minimizing headache? Enter Windows Live Sync.

The solution: Windows Live Sync

Windows Live Sync (previously known as Windows FolderShare) provides users with the ability to easily and automatically synchronize files and folders between multiple computers via the internet. Exactly how many files and folders can it sync? Well, with the most recent update, Windows Live Sync now allows you up to sync up to 20 folders with up to 20,000 files in each folder. That’s a lot of files!

How does it work, exactly? Well, it’s actually pretty simple: Visit http://sync.live.com, download and install the small Windows Live Sync Program onto each computer you want to sync files between, and then choose which folders you wish to synchronize! From then on out, any time your computers are online at the same time they will automatically keep the files in the folders you chose in sync.

The following is a screenshot of the Windows Live Sync website. It shows shared personal folders, folders I’ve shared with other people, and the two computers I have using this service.

If this is your first time syncing, the process may take a few hours depending upon the size of the folders you are syncing as well as the speed of your internet connection. Once this initial sync is done, however, any changes you make to your files within your synced folders should automatically be replicated to your other computers within a few minutes of your making them.

I personally keep a “Current Projects” folder where I put anything I’m currently working on. I synchronize this folder with my laptop, which means I’m always ready for portable computing if I want to leave my apartment for a while. The fact that this folder is never more than a few megabytes in size means that complete synchronization between computers never takes more than a minute or so on a normal broad-band connection.

Remote Access

Windows Live Sync also has a nifty feature called Remote Access. This feature allows you to remotely browse all the folders and files on your computer via a web browser. To do so, point your web browser to http://sync.live.com/, log in, and choose the computer you wish to remotely access. This is a very handy option for accessing a file you forgot to sync or did not know you would need access to.

Please note that Remote Access must be manually enabled under the Windows Live Sync Settings. It is turned off by default for security purposes.

But what about my Mac?

But what about Mac users? Are they left out in the dark? No!

Windows Live Sync supports both Mac OS X and Windows. This makes it an excellent choice for syncing between multiple Macs, between multiple Macs and PCs, or just between PCs.