When it comes to synchronization of data between two or more computers, the very first question you have to ask yourself is: what data do I really need synchronized? This is particulary important if one of your computers is a laptop with limited space on the hard drive.
Types of Data
There is a whole range of data on a computer. To make the decision what data to synchronize easier it helps tremendously to categorize the data. There are basically following types of data: e-mail, calendar items, contact data, documents, media (images, movies, music). Thinking about your data in terms of those categories will let you decide on what data to actually synchronize more easily
What to Synchronize – and what not
Finding out what data to actually synchronize is not really all that hard, all you really need to find out is a bit of common sense.
First rule: do not synchronize everything. In other words, you should not abuse synchronization for backup purposes. There are masses of data on your computer that you do not really need on every computer you use.
Second rule: ask yourself what you are actually working on when working on a secondary computer. Most probably you bought a second computer for a specific purpose. Keep this purpose in mind and synchronize accordingly. For instance, if you bought a laptop to be able to check mail on the go and continue working on your text documents, you should really only synchronize those two sets of data.
