I’m back to using two computers regularly. My trusty laptop now frequently just sits on my desk. While traveling around, my shiny new, lightweight Ubuntu netbook (a Dell mini 12) connects to the Internet, has Open Office, Remote Desktop, and enough other stuff that I am fine. I’m not here to sing the virtues of Ubuntu; I want to talk about the challenges of having data on more than one computer.
In times gone by, when many of us had a big desktop computer at work or home office, and a laptop on the road, synchronizing data was a daily chore. You emailed stuff to yourself, put it on a flash drive or other portable device, copied stuff remotely to a file server, or used early somewhat clunky web services. As laptops Netbooks as well as mobile smart phones have brought back the challenging of syncing two or more computers. Steve Jobs said last fall, "We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that." Now even Apple will likely have one soon. And if your two computers don’t share the same operating system (Mac and Windows, or in my case Mac and Linux), the challenge grows.
I want to pass on two services which have significantly closed the gap for me.
First Dropbox for files. Like many of us, a lot of the documents I need get stored out on the web. Enough things remain in two places to make document synchronization an issue. www.getdropbox.com provides up to 2 GB of free web-assessable storage. You then install a Windows, Mac or Linux client on your computer that will automatically, quickly, securely and transparently sync your designated dropbox folder to the web. It happens so fast, I generally don’t have to double check that something I worked on in Word on Windows will be there when I open it up later in Open Office on Ubuntu. It also handily tracks versions, provides an RSS feed of your updates, and allows you to share with other folks.
I like dropbox. I have no material relationship to them, but I will shamelessly say that if you try it out using this link, I will get a tad more free storage!
Second, LastPass.com. LastPass does for passwords what dropbox does for files. Even with services like Dropbox, more and more work keeps moving entirely to the web. And this means more passwords. Hopefully, you have graduated from one easily guessed password to many unique ones. I have happily used RoboForm for years to keep my gazillion passwords safe and more usable within IE or Firefox than their own password savers. Unfortunately, Roboform only swings the Microsoft way. I have been experimenting with lastpass. Lastpass does have Mac, Linux and Windows versions. And to get started, it imports from Roboform or other popular traditional password managers you may be using.
How secure is dropbox or lastpass? That is a deep question about the state of the Internet and cloud computing generally. I take the popularity of these two services to mean that they are not crooks and scammers. What we can’t know is how much to trust for how long and to what degree their storage of my stuff. Is it more or less secure than Basecamp or Salesforce or other services we use?
For those who want some measure of convenience without having this much faith, you can set up to use a flashdrive instead of the Cloud. Just take your drive with you and plug it in to each new computer you use—and hope you don’t lose that drive and that its encryption can be trusted.
As these and other such services also embrace smartphones and other devices, as well as bridging Mac-Windows-Linux, I suspect they will become another basic part of web life. Other things, like IM, have even easier multiple-machine, cross-platform solutions. The less straightforward challenge is secure remote control of my Windows computer from Linux. I will save that for another time. And I didn't intend this as a "few good tools" comparison, so I'm interested in what else is out there that helps ease multiple computer, multiple operating system life.
