[Zim]

I'm taking the plunge and getting a Powerbook (tho this same discussion is relevant to iBooks too, so excuse the forum location).

I have a G4/800 desktop, and see no good point of getting rid of it (won't fetch much, plus I leave it up 24/7 as a webserver, remote mail server, etc).

I want to use the PB as a mobile client.. mostly for surfing, checking email, playing some games (maybe), and doing file editting/web-page-updating, but not having to sit in front of my desktop to do it.

As such, I'm wondering how much of a "user" I want to define on this PB.

I don't know if I should try to "clone" some part of my existing user, or just create a new one, etc etc. Obviously I'll need to copy over a bunch of file for when I am not at home and on my wireless network (with access to my existing drives)

Can other people in similar situtions explain what they have done? (and the tradeoffs) And what tools are good to know about for "cloning" and keeping the systems in sync?

Thanks,
Mike

[k2director]

I have a desktop and laptop as well, and find it's pretty easy to keep em in synch. I do the following:

1) Subscribe to a .Mac account, which means that AddressBook contacts, iCalendar dates/2dos, and Safari bookmarks are all kept in synch via iSynch. I have each computer set to synch with .Mac every hour automatically, and find that this is foolproof (for the most part).

2) I keep my regularly accessed docs on my iDisk (also via a .Mac account), and therefore the lastest versions are available to my desktop and laptop automatically. OS 10.3 keeps a local copy of your iDisk contents on your hard disk, so even if you don't have an online connection, you can still access and edit the up to date versions of the docs. There are occasional hiccups with this approach (sometimes I end up with copies of the same document open on both computers at the same time, usually because I forgot to close the copy on my laptop the last time I used it, which means I end up with two saved versions of the same file....), but I don't know a better approach, and this one works well enough.

3) For bigger files that won't fit in my iDisk's 100 meg limit, I just use a program like YouSynchronize to synch two folders between machines.


All in all, I have very few synch issues with this approach. Good luck...

[Kristoff]

I have multiple macs.

rsync is your friend.