As PCs are becoming so cheap, instead of replacing an ageing machine, it’s now easier to buy a laptop you can use on the move or get a home PC for the living room. Either way, the problem is that you might want the same data across every computer. That might include your fonts, desktop images and your work data.

Traditionally we’ll have used a desktop backup tool to backup your files and restore them to another machine. However, this doesn’t always work too well and a wiser choice would be to back up your data to a remote server (or website), login with another computer, select the files you want on your machine and then download to the other PC. The other alternative is to synchronise your files across various computers so you’ll automatically have the files you want across every machine, without having to run a scheduled backup.

Syncplicity attempts to be such a tool. At the moment it is Windows only, although a Mac version will be available later this year. You can use this tool to either backup, store and restore your data to/from the Syncplicity website or, to synchronise the data across your PCs, as long as they are using XP or Vista. If you’re away from your regular machine, you can use Syncplicity to access your remote files you’ve backed up to your online account.

Best of all, you can use Syncplicity to share and synchronise files with other users. Simply right-click on the folders you want to share and insert the information of the user(s) that you want to access the folder and contents. This might be useful for sharing project documentation between different developers, located in various locations through the world.

Note that you'll need to open a Syncplicity account, before you install the software. You get 2GB/year which will sync up to 2 computers, for free.