I discovered DROPBOX. And I'm happy I did. I almost threw away an IT news magazine that Eisen has torn to pieces. Good thing I took a look at the write-ups. If I hadn't I would not have read about free and convenient ways of backing up and syncing files.
I have two laptops, the old one is a desktop replacement at home and the other is my netbook which I carry around a lot. If I wrote a document on one of them I usually back up by writing an email to myself with the document attached. Cumbersome. And if I get lazy, I'll forget to do it and curse myself when I need the document elsewhere.
When I read about Dropbox I was amazed to find that it is cross-platform. MAC, Windows, Linux- can do. Free space is 2GB. If you need larger space you'll have to pay $9.99 per month for 50GB or $19.99 per month for 150GB.
You need to install Dropbox in each of the computers you want to have sync and backup access to. In Windows, a My Dropbox folder appears inside the My Documents folder.
Just drag your files to the My Dropbox folder and it will sync the copies in all your computers once they are online. Pretty neat.
Remember to save the modified file in the My Dropbox folder, though. Better yet, open it from there and save it there. If you have a copy of the file in a local folder it won't sync or backup unless you drag it again in My Dropbox.
Now I don't have to tear my hair and gnash my teeth when I've written a file in my desktop replacement. Simply by dragging it to My Dropbox I can have access to it anywhere.
