How to synchronize files on more than one computer

In a previous post, I talked about how to check email from more than one computer. Like most folks who work for a company, I have a computer at work and a computer at home. My work computer is a laptop because I travel a lot, and when I'm gone I also need to do things like pay bills, work on my fantasy football personal correspondence, etc. and so I need to share some files on two computers.

I used to do it the old-fashioned way (heh) by emailing files back and forth. This was tedious for synching a lot of files, so I bought a USB hard drive. I'd periodically copy personal files I'd need onto the hard drive, and then copy those files to my laptop. I keep everything like that in a separate directory (called Personal, it's kind of a code) and I would just copy the entire directory. The problem with that is that if I changed any of my personal files on the laptop, they would get overwritten.

Then I discovered FolderShare, now owned by Microsoft and part of their Windows Live (whatever that is). FolderShare is a free service that you can use to keep your files synchronized between your computers, share files with friends or colleagues, and download your files from any computer that's connected to the Internet. It's been working great for me, behind my firewall and router at home, and even behind the corporate firewall (allegedly). I don't run it all the time, but once a week or so I'll leave my computer on at home, I leave the software running all the time, and I'll start the software on my computer at work, and bingo bango bongo, it's done. The software is careful enough not to delete multiple versions of a file, but saves them them under another file name.

There is a limit on the size and number of files, a single directory can't have more than 10,000 files. I synch most of my Personal folders, although I don't include my iTunes library (too many files) or My Pictures (too large). I also synch my Favorites list (I have 2200+ links) between home and work, this works great, our corporate pushes out new links periodically and they appear at home automatically.

FolderShare is a great way to work seamlessly on multiple computers. All of your resources are there no matter where you are. It works great, and best of all, it's a free download (it's in beta now, but I suppose that they may charge for it down the road, after all Microsoft has to make money somehow).