At any one time I have at least three computers. A laptop, a netbook and at least one desktop machine. Which sounds cool but keeping data in sync between three machines is a logistical nightmare. There’s only so far a flash drive can go to solving the problem.

I’ve been using Dropbox for a while now and it is very likely the best tool, with the best implementation, ever. And I’ve tried a few.

Before there was Dropbox, I used self-scripted rsync scripts to synchronise data across machines. At times I also tried to set up one machine for remote login that could be used to save all my important stuff. But that was overkill and, with sometimes dodgy internet connections, that proved more of a pain than it was worth.

Usually, I resorted to saving important documents on a flash drive. Then I would go home and realise that the drive was sitting on my desk at work.

Then I discovered Dropbox, which did everything I needed better than I would expect.

A Dropbox account is free and includes 2GB of online storage that is accessible from a browser or any of the client applications.

Multi-platform

One of the great things about Dropbox is that it works seamlessly on Windows, Linux or Mac OS X. Dropbox provides a client application on these platforms which integrates with the desktop. You simply need to create a Dropbox folder and then anything you do within that directory is automatically synchronised with an online repository.

The other great thing about Dropbox is that it truly is seamless. If you save a file into the designated Dropbox folder, it immediately begins to synchronise the changes. Once you’ve done an initial synchronisation only the changes are sent backwards and forwards which really makes it seem instantaneous.

One of the other reasons that Dropbox works so well for me is that I tend to move around a lot. I don’t sit in front of one machine all day. I’ll spend an hour or two in one place then head off to a meeting, watch kids doing sport or sit in a conference. So I don’t want something that synchronises every couple of hours or so. The changes I make need to to be synchronised immediately so if I suddenly realise I am late for something and close my machine down I don’t regret it later because there wasn’t time to sync the changes to the story I was writing. Dropbox updates the changes almost as fast as I can make them.

Another advantage of Dropbox is that even when I’m not around a machine with the Dropbox client I can still access my Dropbox folder through a web browser.

As far as consumer-level cloud computing goes, Dropbox is an awesome example of how to make the mobile lifestyle truly possible.

You can download Dropbox from the Dropbox site.