[Squelch11]

Greetings,

Bottom line up front - is it possible to synch two Powerbooks together, so that the latest information such as updated documents, pictures, etc. goes from one to another automatically?

Here's the background:

I have a 12" 1GHz, 768MB RAM, 40GB HDD Powerbook that I've had for about a year. It's my first Mac, and I love it. I also have six PC's in the house, and I use the Mac more than any of them, (except the one that I use for games). I recently bought another PB from Apple, and it should arrive in the next few days. It's a 1.67GHz, 128MB Vram, 100GB HDD, SD, and I bought 2 Gigs of the Kingston memory, (thanks for the Outpost link in the other thread!).

Anyway, right now I use my 12" for so much, including Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, and all that Microsoft Office stuff. I got the 17" because I want some more horsepower. What I'm wondering is if it's possible to have the 17" at home, to use at home, and carry the 12" around with me everywhere, sort of like a big PDA, and synch them together every day when I get home? A lot of my coworkers carry around 8.5x11 notebooks to take notes and things on, and with the battery life and the extremely fast wake-from-hibernation on my 12" I am thinking that I could carry it around and it would take up about the same amount of space. If it's not possible, I will just get a PDA, (I guess a Palm would be good) and use it. But I just figured that it would be great to carry my little PB, but still be able to synch it wih the big one back home...

Thanks for any and all replies.

[Dave Hagan]

I was hoping this feature would be included in iSync, but alas, it is not.

[Randman]

You can use the Migration Assistant to move stuff over from the 12 to the 17. Just repair permissions afterward.

As far as synching, there are many options (and lots of threads on it).

Just what are you wanting to sync is the big question. For example, I have a PB17 and a mini. I have a cloned copy on my firewire external along with all the extra stuff, games, video, all the applications I don't use on a regular basis, my Classic stuff, etc.

My PB is the main with the mini more for the missus (and to keep my music collection on it freeing up space on the PB).

I have .Mac so I keep my Mail, Safari bookmarks, Address Book data, iCal stuff, keychains and other stuff synced (also handy if you need to use a different computer or even a pc). For files, I can do it a number of ways, create a wireless network via AirPort, send via bluetooth, connect the two via firewire cable, use my iPod shuffle or my iDisk).

[Squelch11]

So I guess there's no way for the Mac to tell which file is most recent - I just have to set up a folder for files that I plan on moving backand forth a lot, and make sure that when I move them, I don't overwrite the newer ones. Sort of like the briefcase that Windows has or had a while ago. I was hoping that there would be a newer way to automatically track changes, and always keep the newest file when given the option of synching two laptops together. Guess not. Oh well, I'll live!

[ideasculptor]

Ifc you guys feel like delving into the unix side of things, look into something called rsync. rsync is a program that has been around for decades, which will synchronize two disk, directories, files, whatever... You can synchronize such that files on the source are only copied to the destination, or you can also have files which are no longer on the source deleted from the destination. It only transfers the difference between the source and destination, so it is efficient. You can rsync your home directory, including gigs of pictures and mp3's, and if nothing has changed but a couple of text files, it shouldn't take long at all. The easiest way is to just share the destination drive in some way (I use NFS) and then just run rsync locally.

sudo 'rsync -av /Users/<myusername> /Volumes/10.0.1.4/Users'

in the terminal will basically get the job done. Add --delete to the options if you want to delete files from the destination if they don't exist on the source (the two directories will wind up identical).

If your users don't have the same userid and group id on both machines, things will get wierd, since a file owned by user 501 on the source machine will also be owned by 501 on the destination machines. If user 501 on the source is fred and user 501 on the destination is mike, you will have a problem. If there is only one user on each machine, yoiu probably don't need to worry.

For much more detailed info, type 'man rsync' in a terminal window or google 'rsync'

Someone who is a bigger mac geek than I could probably figure out a way to write an applescript which would cause the appropriate rsync command to execute whenever your powerbook detects that it is on a particular network. At the very least, you could write an applescript which gives you an icon to click on whenever you want to sync.

--sam

[Tomster]

I use rsync to keep my Powerbooks mirrored. Just a quick warning. The version of rsync included is not hfs+ aware so resource forks don't get copied. If one installs RsyncX, it installs an hfs+ aware version in /usr/local/bin and mods the path to call on it first. What's the big deal about resource forks? Certain apps use them and certain ones do not. Quicken for example... Nothing more fun than to discover your Quicken file is now a folder instead of a file and does not open anymore.