Moving from my HD to the NET

Starting over the Christmas & New Years Holidays I began to look for ways to move my computer life onto the net. I've begun to do this so that when it comes time to replace this laptop, or if I'm working on one of the other computers in the household, all of my documents, music and pictures will be available to me. The one requirement I had was that the methods I used must be free as I can't spend a lot of money to put this new challenge into practice.

So the first thing I did was find a way to sync files among my three computers, so far the best method is by using Dropbox , which is installed on each of my computers. I can now save any file into the dropbox up to 2 gig of space and it is immediately available on each of my pc's and is available via the web. This service comes as both free and paid service.

Next, I needed to a find a way to back up my photo's and music collection. After reading around the tech blogs that I enjoy I came upon a highly recommended application called ADrive which offers a free backup software and 50 gig's of free backup space. I have been able to setup my "my documents" to backup at pre-determined times. I'm feeling better already knowing my pictures are safe.

Next up .. what to do with my calendar/contacts/tasks that I currently use MSOffice to keep my address and e-mail up-to-date. Again, many fine alternatives exist but I'm trying to move off my laptop and into the web, so options such as OpenOffice my favorite didn't fill the bill. I have been spending much of my time of late in Google, using google calendar, google reader and gmail. So far all of these have been working fine as my outlook replacements. I am using Remember the Milk to manage my tasks. Another need here was the ability to have all this information available to me via my Tilt Cell Phone. Google docs has also been working fine so far as my spreadsheet, document writer and presentation software. The only problem I've been having is that the Google reader does not format well on my cell phone and I miss my mobile Newsgator software for reading my RSS on the move.

My finances are now gathered for my review using Mint. Having all of my accounts in one place makes it so much simpler to create my budget and monitor my accounts.

If anyone has other suggestions for how to move from the local HD to the "Cloud" ( Net ) feel free to leave your thoughts.

Bonnie