In a conversation with a friend this week, I realized that I have mastered a very dark art. I have figured out how to move around between many computers, using them frequently, while never being without my data and information regardless of the computer, the operating system, the browser and the like.
I am not sure how you work, but if you are in the technology industry like me, you find yourself using several different machines. At work I have a desktop PC that I use running Windows 7 with both Firefox and Internet Explorer 8 as browsers. I also have a company issued laptop that runs Windows 7 and Internet Explorer.
At home it get’s much messier. My main machine runs Windows 7 with Internet Explorer 8 as the main browser, but I also find my time split with a Macbook Pro laptop with Safari and Firefox, a two Mac Pros both with only Safari, and occasional use of an iMac with Safari as well.
That’s a big stew of machines and several different regular browsers. Now the question is (other than why do I have so many machines) what do I do with them and how do I manage to do that comfortably on any machine? I’ll break this down into a few types of productivity, and then explain how I manage to move through this quagmire with grace and style.
One of the most frustrating things to use on multiple computers and now phones, is email. The most simple of internet transports, email can be a total mess when you start checking it in more than one place. Traditionally, email moves over two protocols, POP3 for sending email, and SMTP for receiving email. If you don’t know what those are, feel free to read the Wikipedia links. The problem with using POP3 for receiving email, is that you pretty much have two options. You can download the message to your computer and remove it from the server, making it impossible for you to retrieve from the next machine, or you can download it while leaving a copy on the server, which means the next machine will download the message regardless of whether you have identified it as junk or not.
This all sounds so messy, but fear not, there is a very lovely solution in sight. Not every email service supports it, but Gmail does. I migrated my personal domain email over to Gmail a few years ago, and enabled IMAP support. IMAP is an alternative protocol to POP3 that instead of downloading messages, maintains a live connection to your mailbox.
The benefit of this solution is that if I delete an email with my email client, it is automatically deleted from the server. If I send an email, a copy of that email is stored in the sent items on the server. If I reorganize my entire email folder system, it is reflected the next time I log in from another machine.
This functionality takes all of the tedium out of managing my email in multiple places. While I am at work, I don’t use an email client, I simply manage my email on the web. When I come home and open up Thunderbird, in a few seconds all of the changes I made to my mailbox are reflected and I am exactly how I left it the last place I was. This even works for managing my email on my iPhone. If I delete a message it’s gone, if I send it, it’s sitting on my desktop in sent items the next time I am home. I am sold.
Files
Another really frustrating point when working between machines is constantly thumbing around files, emailing them, dealing with version hassles and simply being frustrated because you don’t have access to something. I have parsed my files in two manners. All of what I call “productivity files” are stored in the service Dropbox. The Dropbox program is on all of my PCs, Macs and iPhone and the service makes sure that a recent copy of all of my files I need is synced to all of the machines. The files are all stored in the same place in the same file structure.
These files are also available, including 30 days worth of version history, online. This has come in very handy when I deleted something and then realized I needed it, or just wanted to go back to a previous version of something. When I open a document, change it and save it, within seconds the changed version is updated on all of my machines. I never have to make any effort to move or manage the files.
I have replaced the Camera app on my iPhone with the Dropbox app and now every photo I take is instantly available on all of my computers. Another awesome convenience is a public folder that I can copy files to and then provide a link for anyone to download them, I have used this an infinite number of times already to share a file quickly with a friend via IM or email, it’s much more convenient than sending the actual file or trying to transfer it via IM transfer.
While the $10/mo service I pay for (2GB per month is free) gives me plenty of space, some of the music and video files I work with are just too big to conveniently transfer over the internet, for those files I use Windows Home Server. Windows Home Server is where all of my media is saved when I am at home, and conveniently, Microsoft gives you the ability to make your server publicly available so you can log in and download a movie or some songs that you realized you wanted to have somewhere else. Pretty handy feature! There is also the ability to add files to it while you are remote.
The last convenient feature with Windows Home Server is the ability to remote desktop into any computer on my home network via the server as a gateway. If it happens that I have not stored the file in Dropbox, and I am not saving it on the server, I can physically take control of any PC on my network (and Macs via VNC) and get the file I need and move it to a location I can get to. I love thumb drives, but I don’t find myself needing them quite as much anymore.
Bookmarks
There was a long time when I just plain didn’t use bookmarks. I still read MOST of the sites I follow via RSS, but with all of the banking sites, retirement sites, my personal sites, things I just want to look at again later, as well as webmail, Bloglines and work email, bookmarks are just easier. I keep all the ones I really use in a hierarchy in the browser’s bookmark toolbar so I have quick access.
The problem is that I use different browsers on different OSes, so I can’t just sync bookmark files or something. Enter X-Marks. X-marks is a service that works on any browser on any operating system (at least the major ones) that keeps a server copy of all my bookmarks that I can manage. Then when it syncs, it makes sure that everything is how it should be. That way if I bookmark something to look at it later, it’s bookmarked on my PC when I get home.
I can’t tell you how handy it is. I actually keep a bookmark folder called “Random” that I throw this stuff into so I can keep it away from the meticulous organization of my other bookmarks (did I mention I am a bit OCD?)
What Does It All Mean?
What it means is that I always have my stuff. It also means that with a new machine or a necessary reinstall, I can pretty much install X-Marks, Dropbox and Office and I am back in business and can work. It also means that if I find myself on a rogue machine I don’t own, I can get to my stuff if I need to do something. It makes for a very clean workflow for my nomadic computing lifestyle.
I hope this helps those of you that find yourself between machines often. This is also really useful information if you find yourself dual booting (bootcamp for you Mac guys) a lot!
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so the last remaining frustration is proprietary formats. i love eaglefiler on my mac, but its best feature, creating ‘web archives’ of any page you want to save (for research purposes, for instance), uses a format unreadable on pc. (you can save using rtf, but it’s much less elegant.)
on the pc side, i’d love to use onenote, but it would be useless when i’m back at my mac.
(yes, i could use parallel, or whatever, but buying windows for my mac doesnt seem like a great use of $.)
OK.. so, as a MS programmer, please explain why I can’t use a MS email client (like Outlook), connect to Exchange, and function like Imap or Exchange local? I know, with Exchange 2007 or newer I can. And probably with some major protocol changes I might be able to. The part that gets me is that my iPhone will (as you mentioned above). It works flawlessly with my current setup. I have my contacts, calendar, and email matching my office desktop connected locally. Can we do that with MS on our home PC? OWA works, but it’s slow and limited. Ideas?