Gordon said:
My primary computer runs Windows 7 and IE9 and Live Mesh. My secondary
machine runs XP SP3 and IE8. As Live Mesh won't install on XP ...
Because IE9 won't install on pre-Vista versions of Windows. Mesh relies
on functionality incorporate within IE9 (the REST-based API in IE9 for
accessing Mesh services via HTTP). Besides not wasting their resources
to backwards upgrade products that are no longer supported or soon to be
discontinued, Microsoft wants to draw users to buy new versions of their
Windows product and that means providing new features via Windows and IE
that aren't available or usable in prior versions of these products.
They're a business so they want to make money and that means altering a
product to provide lures to get consumers to part with their money.
According to:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/explore/access-your-pc-from-anywhere
you can use a Windows XP host in your mesh network. It just can't be
the remote host from which you want to retrieve sync updates. You need
a Vista/7 host to push updates there and for it to be your central store
from which you sync your other hosts (the ones you are currently at).
So, according to Microsoft and contrary to your claim, you can use Mesh
with your Windows XP host. You don't install Mesh on your XP host. You
have your XP host access your Vista/7 host to do the sync. It does
appear you need to install an ActiveX control (client) on each local
host (the one you're at) to do the sync. So if you cannot install the
ActiveX control then it's likely you're not an admin at the host where
the AX client must be installed.
does anyone know of an automatic way to synchronise favorites between
the two?
Do you want a local-only solution, a host-to-host solution, or a cloud
solution?
What you're asking for requires some online service to either allow its
clients to sync between themselves or to let their clients retrieve
data.
For clients that sync automatically between themselves using the online
service, one example is Dropbox. You install this on each host where
you want them to sync up a set of folders. Alas, it looks like you can
only sync on subfolders under wherever is the parent folder for the
"Dropbox" folder (
https://www.dropbox.com/help/12). You probably could
use TweakUI to move (and change the registry entries for) the Favorites
folder so it is under the Dropbox parent folder. Alternatively, it
might work to define a junction point as a subfolder under the Dropbox
parent folder that points back to the real Favorites folder (you'll need
3rd party tools to define junction points, like Rekenwonder's Junction
Link Magic).
For clients that store a list up on the server and then yank that list
down to the client (and also push up any changes to the server), one
example is the Google Toolbar which uses you Google account's Bookmarks
feature (
http://www.google.com/bookmarks). Obviously you'll need a
Google account. As I recall, their bookmarks show separately as a drop-
down in the Google Toolbar. You would need to export/import to get the
URL shortcuts moved between the local Favorites folder and the server-
side Bookmarks folder in your account.
Dropbox has had its security breaches in the past. Saving data up on a
server means you could lose it, especially with a free service, and
infiltration is possible despite their promises (which they disavow in
their Terms of Service). Using the "cloud" always incurs security risks
and possible data loss/theft. Dropbox really isn't a cloud solution
since your data isn't stored there. They just arrange for the hosts to
connect to each other to do the transfer between them. Google Bookmarks
is more like in-the-cloud stuff since you store your data on their
servers and then retrieve or access it when you want (you data is up
there, not local on your hosts).
You could use TweakUI on each host you use to change the location of the
Favorites folder to a folder on a USB thumb drive. Unless your question
relates to using remote access to other hosts, you will be physically at
the other hosts where you want to use your URL shortcuts - so you could
just take your URL shortcuts with you. Even if you don't get tricky by
moving the Favorites folder so its location points at the USB drive, you
could just export/import the URL shortcuts to/from the USB drive and
look at that folder to see your shorcuts and double-click on them to
load them in whatever is the default web browser on whatever host you're
using at the time. While export/import is a bit clumsy and requires
manual intervention to eliminate duplicates or delete defunct entries,
you could use a sync/backup utility, like SyncBack, to keep your
Favorites folder in sync with the URL shortcuts in the folder on the USB
thumb drive. For this sync to work automatically on all hosts means
having to install SyncBack on all those hosts. This assumes the other
hosts you use aren't locked down to block use of the USB ports. This
would a local-only sync setup so you don't run into problems with the
"cloud" being out-of-service, unreachable (through your currently
available routing between you and the target host), down for
maintainence, recovered which could result in you losing newly added
data, lost data (especially for a free account), or a lost or hijacked
account.
