Vista: Sync Center

I finally took the time to play around with Vista's built in sync capabilities. I've been working on a couple projects and moving files back and forth from my laptop to my desktop as I work both at and away from home. Moving thousands of tiny files back and forth over the network can take ages and frankly, I'm sick of it. I keep the files in the same place all the time (I'm very organized when it comes to long term projects), so it is only natural to set up a network share between the two computers, and I knew I wanted to sync my files, but I had no idea how easy it actually is.

In Vista, all you have to do is navigate to your shared folder, right click on it, and select "Always available offline". 

That's it. Simple. 

You have a few other options in the Sync Center... you can setup the folder(s) to sync on a schedule and what not. It's rather fancy. I recommend mapping a drive to the folder you want to sync so that you can easily pull it up from 'Computer' when you're away from home or the office.

There are lots of great resources both within Windows Vista and on the inter-tubes that go into more depth on the subject, but I think it's worth checking out!

(By the way, there is a similar option available within OneNote that allows you to sync your notebooks over the network... it's really easy to use and makes OneNote even more powerful. I now have all the same notebooks available on both my laptop and my desktop... Neat!)