Synchronizing my work across multiple platforms and formfactors

hazemix

I have a desktop and two laptops. I want to do something on one laptop, and then have the changes reflected on the desktop the next time i use it. Same with the other laptop.

my problems are so hard

JHunz

It obviously depends on what "something" is. If you're just talking synchronizing filesystems, I've heard good things about Robocopy, although I don't know how well it handles three-way syncing. You could try it out, though, it's available with the Windows Resource Kit

If "something", on the other hand, is an Oracle database and you want to do three-way synchronization, I'm going to have to recommend suicide.

torbit

If your laptops and desktop are on the same LAN (just works better over a LAN, versus over the internet), a really easy solution would be to use Remote Desktop, which is built into Windows. You'd enable Remote Desktop on your, well, desktop, and then from there you can connect to your desktop from any of your laptops, log into your Windows user, and resume *whatever* you were just working on on the desktop. It's actually really simple to do.

On your Desktop, right-click My Computer, go to Properties. Under the 'Remote' tab, check "Allow users to connect remotely to this computer.". Optionally you can specify which users you want to be able to connect with the "Select Remote Users.." button. Keep in mind your Windows account will *need* a password set in order to use Remote Desktop, just for security reasons. Hit OK, and that's it as far as the desktop.

On your Laptops, goto Start, All Programs, Accessories, Communications, click Remote Desktop Connection. In the 'Computer' textbox, put in your desktop's computer name, or the IP address of it (would probably work better). You can put in the User name you want to connect to , and a password, and then you can click 'Save As'... at the bottom to save the connection settings to a file, that you can just open up whenever and connect (like on the Desktop). Once connected, you'll be in control of your desktop with whatever applications you had open before, and on the actual desktop, your user will be logged out, and Windows will sit at the login screen until you come back and log back in.

Hope that helped.

hazemix

it very quickly tells me that the workgroup does not have any terminal servers, or when i use the IP address it wont work.

here's more details.
I've got a wireless network at home.
the desktop is win2k, one laptop is winXP, and the other is VISTA. I'm mostly talking about word documents, pdfs and what not.
I know MSone-note is really good for synchronizing documents and I'm looking into getting that.
I have a WRT54G v2.0 hacked with the latest TALISMAN build from SVEASOFT, but I just upgraded the firmware and have never set it up before.
having some kind of domain system where other computers would automatically be detected when they are part of the wireless network would be ideal. I can turn the desktop into a server if necessary... just want some direction

Jimmy King

hazemix wrote: »

having some kind of domain system where other computers would automatically be detected when they are part of the wireless network would be ideal. I can turn the desktop into a server if necessary... just want some direction

You don't need a full blown AD domain setup for that. As long as they're all in the same workgroup any computer on the network will show up in "My Network Places".