Ok my friend has a pc upstairs and a laptop to use downstairs and he wants to work on his upstairs files downstairs. Now i just use homegroup or dropbox. But is there a simpler way? really is a idiot and it needs to be idiot proof. Im sure he just doesnt get it on purpose to be annoying. What would you say is the best way with out him deleting everything then moaning its my fault?
If he's going to have both machines on at the same time he could map the upstairs machine drive so it would just appear as a normal drive on the laptop. ...and if he keeps blaming you for things going wrong then I would remove all tech help completely and actually give him something to moan about.
I would install skydrive (or your choice of cloud drive) and move my documents inside this, then when he clicks on my documents it will be there without any issues
I've kinda agree with the Home group as its pretty much designed for non-IT types to use or just a windows share. Really no need to use a 3rd party for something so basic to windows. Also unfortunately there isn't an idiot proof method, only idiot resistant and even then there is no helping some people If he wants to work on the files stored on another device (Stored on PC upstairs and being worked on downstairs via laptop) then he'll need read/write access so if he does delete everything its his own fault. Not sure if you can drill down far enough to give create/edit permissions but deny delete (for his own safety).
Well, you could set up shadow copies properly, that way if they do delete it you can restore it without much effort. I would also just map the share so they don't get confused having to go to network/homegroup whatever to find it.
Setup SkyDrive. This will allow you to sync files between your computers even on the go, as you have a laptop.
Not much point using skydrive though now google offers 15GB for free and has pretty much the same core features. I agree that HomeGroup is pretty useless, it always decides to break. My favourite method is usually just a flash drive, so that when you plug it in it syncs the files across automatically.
Skydrive offers better windows/office integration than Google Drive/Dropbox but ultimately they're all pretty similar You could also try something like Bittorrent Sync
Google is crap. You need to use a web site to upload and download your files. It's very annoying. SkyDrive creates a folder on your system, and everything inside is sync between your systems. It's far better integrated than Google, and will manage the versions, and avoid version conflicts (both version of a file are open at the same time, and saved at the save time.... the content in both are different... which one overwrites which one?). It's smart and well integrated into Windows, especially Windows 8.1, where it's literary built-in. In addition, with web access, you can view and edit Microsoft Office documents, with Office on the web. If you try that with Google Docs, you pretty much will break the entire document presentation, meaning it will take you a long time to fix everything again once home with Office. It's a pain. Also, you have an option to edit a Office document in your installed Office, where when you save, it sends it over for you. Basically, you access the file from the web, not your local system. Great if you prefer a full Office experience when you edit your document. The other one (via the web browser) is great if the computer doesn't have Office.
Not strictly true... Since it became 'google drive' it has explorer integration like skydrive/dropbox do... The only thing it wouldn't let me do was edit my Google Docs documents in office, i had to edit them through the web app... Plus if you have any of the Office 365 subs one of the 'extras' is +20GB of storage for SkyDrive [making it 27GB iirc or if you were an early adopter of skydrive like in my case 45GB]
Im assuming you haven't used google drive in a while judging by your opinion. Google drive is fully integrated into windows explorer, and the web view is pretty fantastic, and much better than the web version of skydrive. While compatibility with complex office documents isn't 100% in the web view it works pretty well for normal documents. Also, usually the file will be opened in windows so will use whichever app you want. Also the ios/android apps of google drive are much better and full featured than their skydrive counterparts. Obviously if you have the original 25GB plus any extra then its just as good a service but now you only get 7GB free compared to google drives 15GB. There really isn't a big enough advantage to choose one over the other in terms of features, but which one has the most free space.
In Windows 8.1, SkyDrive syncs your wireless connections/password, Modern UI apps, login picture, background picture, lock screen picture, theme, IE password, HomeGroup password, Ease of Access, IE Browser password and history, and some Windows settings like mouse looks.
Before this turns into a MS v Google willy waving thread... Both lots of webapps are well-featured to the point when i was without a working pc, I used office webapps and was able to do everything i normally did on the desktop... likewise has been true when using google drive [and before that google docs]... If windows integration is a plus for you, you are/were an early adopter of skydrive and/or have an office 365 sub... go skydrive If you absolutely need the space and/or use google's other web apps [namely what was google docs and picasa] a lot... Google Drive If linux support is a must... Dropbox
I know this is off topic but on Linux you can use: http://eu.storagemadeeasy.com/ to have all the services, from google drive to skydrive dropbox etc ...
thanks guys, think I will explore skydrive as the syncing of files mainly needed are word and excel. Also going to be looking at the best solution to fully mirror outlook onto both machines so I imagine skydrive might be my friend here too.
Sadly, I have not found a way to do this.. yet. But I haven't actually looked into it deeply. Well for email, you can use IMAP, and you are set. But for RSS feeds, and settings, that's locally stored. Perhaps you can put the Outlook account file on the SkyDrive folder... that's maybe a possibility. You can see if that works.
You'll probably be fine with it. I 'think' they've omitted LAN sync though which means all file transfers have to go via the cloud rather than over the net. Shouldn't be an issue in your use case, but something to remember if you want to occasionally transfer large files. ( Goodbytes may confirm this. He lives and breathes MS and knows all ). Personally I use Dropbox for my main syncing duties and have done for quite a few years now. Kept with it when I added a Mac to the system and kept with it when I relegated the PC to occasional gaming only. It's one of those 'Has never let me down, but helped me out loads' apps that just works and therefore I don't see a need to change.
