Beinsync

Helping roaming and remote workers access, share, and backup their data is never easy for IT. BeInSync hopes to remedy that situation come Monday when the company releases BeInSync Business, the business version of its data management package There are any number of architectures that enables employees to access, backup and retrieve data. VPNs and remote access software solve the acces problem. Backup utilities will address the data preservation issue. Few if any can offer the full suite and do so without the complexity of installing a server or appliance. BeInSync claims that its Business edition will be the first comprehensive suite to provide access, backup, synchronization and data sharing. Employees will be able to synchronize files across multiple PCs automatically and securely. They'll be able to share their files with peers and access remote files on corporate servers. Finally, they'll be able to backup their data to sophisticated storage system offering Continuous Data Protection (CDP) capabilities, such as an unlimited number of snapshots of stored files. Backup storage starts at 5GB and goes from there. BeInSync can do all of that because its based arond Amazon's S3 Web Service, a web service for storing and retreiving data. The company claims to have added security, account permissions, snapshotting and other continuous data protection capabilities. By using the Amazon infrastructure, BeinSync can service very large customers moving petabytes of information, something that would normally have been very costly for a startup to build out. The service will be available at announcement and priced at $20 per month per user. Editorial standards

Not too long ago, moving files between PCs was quite a hassle. Whether you were shuttling files among your own machines or swapping files with someone else, your best bet was to e-mail them back and forth. But even that was time-consuming, and because of crowded in-boxes and attachment restrictions, it didn't always work. Today, however, there are any number of inexpensive, Web-based applications that let you move files between point A and point B. You can use a remote access tools like Laplink Everywhere or 01 Communique's I'm InTouch. And if you'd like to swap files with friends, family, and colleagues, you can use private peer-to-peer apps like Grouper, Qnext, or ShareDirect. Then there are apps like BeInSync and ByteTaxi's FolderShare. With these tools, you can easily swap files among your own machines and also with friends and family. And you can automatically synchronize files and folders across multiple machines, avoiding manual transfers entirely. If you change a file on one machine, it's automatically changed on all the others.When it comes to file swapping and synchronization, FolderShare is about on a par with BeInSync. BeInSync's interface is a bit more intuitive, but FolderShare gives you a bit more freedom in terms of which files and folders you'd liked to share and synchronize. The main difference is that BeInSync also lets you synchronize e-mail messages, contacts, and more. FolderShare handles only files (unless you want to kludge together workarounds). But it's cheaper than BeInSync. In fact, its Basic version is completely free; BeInSync costs $9.95 per month.FolderShare is unusual in that it's not quite a standalone client and not quite a browser-based app. It's a bit of both. To use the service, you first download and install a small client on your primary PC and sign up for an account,

At a GlanceProsPowerful remote accessOnline file manager is very desktop-likeConsConfusing interface makes features hard to findLots of info, but not accessible at a glanceOur VerdictMicrosoft has sacrificed usability to provide a pretty interface in this powerful but unnecessarily clumsy service. Using Microsoft’s Live Mesh service is like learning to drive a car: Once you have the hang of it, it seems pretty straightforward–but if you’ve never sat in front of a dashboard before, it can be a little confusing at first. The current preview version serves mainly to provide you with remote access to other computers, a method to synchronize data on those computers, and a way to share data with colleagues.Unlike the hand-holding interface of BeInSync, the Mesh Web site starts you off with a screen showing existing devices (including the online file manager, Live Desktop) and a big ‘+’ button for adding one. With a new device, you log in to the Mesh site and click the ‘+’ button to download and install the Mesh software. Once you’ve set up all your computers, you can connect to any one of them and even control that system remotely via Windows Remote Desktop, a Windows XP and Vista feature that Live Mesh enhances. (You might also need to install an ActiveX control on the system you’re using to access another of your devices.) Unlike BeInSync, which provides access just to the data residing on other machines, the remote-desktop feature in Mesh lets you take complete control of a distant computer, although a slow Internet hookup will make the experience painful if not impossible.If you don’t require remote access, you can head over to the Live Desktop to do your syncing and sharing chores. You can easily synchronize any folder on a computer by right-clicking it and choosing Add folder to your Live Mesh. If you expand the dialog box, you can also identify which computers Mesh should copy the data to for syncing. In most cases you’ll want at least one copy on the Live Desktop Internet “cloud” (Microsoft‘s connected servers) so that you can access it even when your other computers are shut off. If you indicate that you want the data synced to other computers, Mesh will make a copy of the folder on the desktops of those machines (rather than asking you to decide where to put it, as BeInSync and Syncplicity do).Mesh assigns a blue icon to folders it manages, but (unlike Dropbox and Sync­plicity) it provides no direct indication as to whether they are up-to-date. Mesh does give you other kinds of information via the “Mesh bar,” a sidebar that it attaches to every open Mesh folder window. The sidebar lists who is using a shared folder and how many people it’s shared with, as well as a report of recent activity, including alerts about version conflicts. For information on multiple folders, you can open a pop-up Notifier window by clicking the Mesh icon in Windows’ taskbar tray.Live Mesh’s online file manager is the most