Keeping two computers synced up

I make my entire living on a computer but am not an IT person and really don't know enough about PC's.

I recently fought with a computer to clean it up then finally reinstalled Windows 7.

I am wondering of keeping two computers for business make sense.

I use the same laptop in two locations at home. I do most of my work at a desk with a docking station and two monitors, I use it like a desktop at my main desk. When I fill orders I carry the computer and use it alone in a room I call my clean room.

I do sometimes take the computer other places to work.

I am thinking about getting two more docking stations and two more identical computers.

Two for work and one for non-work related activities. If I had a second computer that was maybe a week behind on being synched up I would have had no problems.

Is there a easy way to keep to identical laptops synched up maybe 1 week apart from each other?

I think it would make life much easier for me as I would have less downtime even with things on an external hard drive.

I guess what I want to do is have two computers set up identically but synched up weekly as well as an external hard drive also synched up weekly.

I could keep one computer at my main desk, one in my clean room to process orders and if anything goes wrong the second computer could move back and forth until I am up and running again.

I am thinking my non-work computer could be the same so I can also use the docking stations.

Is this a good strategy to avoid downtime? Is synching up laptops a fast and easy thing to do? Will the synch up go both directions?

I am worried about the both direction things. Lets say I put something on one computer and then later put something on the other computer and synch them up?

logicearth said:

Windows Live Mesh.

I will look into something like that.

I was hoping I would not have to do something remote. The computers would be on opposite ends of a very small house and a portable. I would want the synching to not be in real time so that if I infect or something goes wrong with one computer it will not have affected the other.

I could live with things being out of synch by one week.

logicearth said:

Live Mesh is not remote...it can be if you want to sync files to SkyDrive you are given 5 GB worth of space on the internet just for that, otherwise it will sync computer to computer over your network.

Thanks a bunch, that sounds like what I want.

I am guessing that with SkyDrive it can be set up where it is not real time and I can get it set up with a synch up command and get them synched when I want to rather than on a schedual or live?

I don't need to keep a small network going except for synching. I work entirely from my home.

I think you are overthinking what you need to do. You don't need two computers to fight off issues or reinstalls. If you want a Windows 7 computer to run efficient and clean, that's an easy task. You just need good AV software and good usage habits.

As for syncing, move your e-mail to an IMAP account or web-based account, so nothing is stored locally on your computer. Everything can be accessed online from several computers. Live Mesh can handle documents for you.

DeaconFrost said:

I think you are overthinking what you need to do. You don't need two computers to fight off issues or reinstalls. If you want a Windows 7 computer to run efficient and clean, that's an easy task. You just need good AV software and good usage habits.

As for syncing, move your e-mail to an IMAP account or web-based account, so nothing is stored locally on your computer. Everything can be accessed online from several computers. Live Mesh can handle documents for you.

How I got in trouble is I was suspicious of someone who signed up on my forum. I did a search of their user id and username and when I went to one of the links I got in Google. Microsoft Security Essentials quit working. I tried to do somethings to fix it and was getting the message that it was not an installed service. I actually didn't know I was infected for awhile. My first clue was my external keyboard was doing strange things. When I tried to do a virus scan I couldn't.

I think two computers has two benefits. I carry this computer back and forth between two rooms as I work. I work from one room then when I am ready to fill orders I carry it to another room. When I am finished filling orders I carry it back to my home office.

Two could make daily work a tiny tiny bit easier and they could be a backup to each other if something goes really wrong.

Two years ago I had a hard drive failure and really slowed down work.

essenbe said:

Take a look at Team Viewer and see if this migh help.

Thanks,

I will take a look at that.

It also sounds like a Windows Home Server would be a better choice for you than a second computer.