Ian Dixon and the Live Team blogged yesterday about FolderShare.  It’s a little tool that’s in Live Beta that lets you synchronise your files between computers.  Ian brought up the BRILLIANT idea of synchronising your media using it.  I’ve decided to do something slightly different and synchronise my downloads, since almost all my surfing is done on the laptop it makes much more sense.

So here’s how I’ve set it up.

Setting up the laptop

The first thing I did was download the tool from here.

Second I simply ran the install and entered some details, note that they don’t HAVE to be your LiveID (how odd???).  Then using the web page I selected the files I wanted to sync.

Setting up the Media Center

The next thing I did was copied the install .msi file over to the Media Center, and installed it.  At the end of the install it asks you what libraries you want to sync, and where too, again through a web page.  Then it start to sync things. 

Using it

In the system try on both boxes is a little folder share icon.  Click on it and it gives me some options, including activity which oddly enough tells you what’s going on.  So now when I download something on the laptop, it just appears on the Media Center.

Conclusions

Great Tool.  I’ll probably smarten this up when I get more used to it, but it’s one of the nicest little sync programs out there.  I’ve also been using Sugar Sync which also stores everything in the cloud – which I’m not sure about, the p2p technology in FolderShare is far more efficient for what I want. 

Question to Microsoft is why not integrate FolderShare with SkyDrive?

Extra Bonus: you can access all the files on your boxes from anywhere now over the web, I need to play with that a bit, I’ll probably pop along to the local Costa Coffee later for their free WiFi and check it out.

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