Firefox Sync

Do you trust their encryption and privacy policies? Since all your saved passwords and much other personal information is going to be sent outside...

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Duh! I didn't think of that :-(

Is there some simple way to duplicate settings, bookmarks, passwords, etc., from my main machine onto my laptop?

Extensive travel is in my future :-( ...Jim Thompson

I have moved it from one computer to another by doing the install, then copy the folder to the new computer. As far as bookmarks, you can export/import them as HTML files so you export it, then copy it to the other computer. If you want to save existing bookmarks, export them first and move them to another directory, just in case. As far as passwords, there are a lot of password manager programs, but I've never used one.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Thank, Spehro! ...Jim Thompson

Hard drive *copy* to hard drive is the fastest and most reliable. Negative side is that in the laptop you will have to satisfy the setup differences: drivers (mostly motherboard related). All of the above considerations depend on what "etc" covers...

I've been using it for a couple of months now and I like it for my purposes. Beyond that, I have no comments.

Additionally, I cannot comment on security.

John

Well, it's faster if the amount of data justifies the front end mechanical work (the driver issue need be solved only 'once').

The rage these days is 'cloud computing', like Firefox sync (browser only), which is similar to Google (does more), but, as has been pointed out, your data is on someone else's server. Both Firefox and Google encrypt but, then, encryption can be broken. Depends on how paranoid you are.

Windows98 had a feature called 'briefcase' that synced folders between (Windows) PCs (more specifically, they envisioned a PC and a 'notebook' carrying the 'briefcase'), and there is still a 'synctoy' free download for doing the same thing, but I never found it to be much 'easier' than copying by hand and in some cases worse. You still have to manually set off the 'folder sync' (or individual items) but it does try to 'guess' (by date) which should be updated, or skipped, when there's a conflict. However, since I know which computer I was using it's just as easy to copy manually. Also worth noting, briefcase doesn't do 'check in/check' out nor sync multiple machines. Anyway, some may find it useful because it isn't restricted to specific things like Firefox and Google sync are.

Much depends on your own habits. For example, I keep a lot more than just contacts and bookmarks sync'd on multiple machines so it's not all that much more to include them in my 'distributed backup'. However, a cloud sync is push pull, not on a schedule, so it's always up to date. It's on their server so there's never a case of "darn, I should have done a sync before I left."

Note that things like folder sync are PC to PC syncs so if you want 'everything' sync'd your phone might be the determining factor.

As such, if you have an Android phone you'll likely Google sync, because it's default built in, so 'you're done' if you can (or want to) use Google for everything everywhere. If using a Windows Mobile phone you'll likely be syncing with Outlook, especially if your workplace is organized around an Outlook server. However, you can sync an Android phone with Outlook and a WM phone to Google (in fact, I use that to 'cross sync' Outlook with Google contacts).

One that has not yet been mentioned is Opera and there's an Opera for both Android and Windows Mobile plus, of course, the PC in Windows, Mac, and Linux flavors. Their sync tool is called "Opera Link" but, like Firefox, that won't sync contacts.

As far as I know Google on Android is the only one that automatically 'does it all' outside an Outlook domain, if cloud computing doesn't scare you off, precisely because it's cloud computing and you are simply accessing the one 'master' location. Or, one way to look at it, is it's the 'public' substitute for an Outlook server.

carbonite.com and gotomypc.com Both allow you to retrieve files from a remote computer.

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

I just run sshd on my home boxes and forward port 22 to some non-obvious port on the Internet side of the firewall. Then you can use Expandrive or something like that (I use sshfs from Linux) and mount the drive from your remote machine. That avoids most of the security problems.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

You also need a DynDNS account, but they're free if you don't mind having a cheesy domain name.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs