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Stay in Sync

New, affordable Web-based services can automatically keep your data accessible--and up-to-date--on multiple PCs. We tested five services to see which can best wrangle your files.

Scott Dunn, PC World

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Syncing for Cell Phones

Sometimes, being able to synchronize data across desktops and laptops isn't enough: More and more people want to access their files, photos, music, and other content from their cell phone or other mobile device. The creators of Dropbox and Live Mesh are working on adding support for mobile devices, but SugarSync and Syncplicity already have mobile versions of their site. These mobile editions give you full access to the same online file manager and photo gallery you'd use in a desktop browser. Depending on your mobile device (SugarSync supports the BlackBerry, iPhone, and Windows Mobile, while Syncplicity supports the iPhone and iPod Touch only), you may not be able to download or edit the files, but you can send them to other people via e-mail.

If you require more-robust viewing, editing, and file-management abilities, however, you might soon have them in the form of Quickaccess from Quickoffice. As its name suggests, Quickaccess gives access to synced files from a remote PC on mobile devices.

Quickaccess; click to view full-size image.With Quickaccess, you can download photos and music files for viewing or listening, and you can download document formats such as Adobe PDF, or Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. Quickaccess converts the files to the SVG format to produce good display resolution without consuming much memory.

If you need to edit the Office files, Quickaccess works in conjunction with Quickoffice to let you open them, change them, and upload them to the server again for syncing back to your main computer. Quickaccess also offers options for managing files (copying, renaming, deleting) and for sharing them with or sending them to colleagues. If your main system is powered on, you can even search it from your mobile device. As with other syncing products, you'll need to install the desktop component on all the computers (Windows and/or Mac) you intend to sync.

Quickaccess debuted this year for the Symbian S60 platform; Quickoffice plans to roll out a Windows Mobile edition by the end of the year, with support for other mobile platforms to follow. Quickaccess costs a very modest $20 per year for 10GB storage.

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