I have 3 computers I use regularly, my desktop, my laptop and a new cute little netbook. The netbook is for traveling without the heft of my laaptop, the laptop is for when I am stuck in bed with an arthritis or pseudogout flare, and the desktop for normal.
I have a spiffy program called dropbox on all 3 that allows me to share stuff with both my other computers and certain friends by synching when the computer is next online… I have figured out how to share with friends, that isnt my problem. I use thunderbird for my emails - but vista seems reluctant to share files with xp without a lot of threats and coercion, so I was wondering if I could move the location of thunderbird into dropbox and be able to see all the same emails on all 3 computers? Obviously right now, if I pick up my email on my laptop it isnt on my desktop and vice versa. I would like to have the complete pool of my emails on all 3 computers. And for added fun, can I do the same for firefox, so any bookmark I place is shared on all 3? I have my core bookmarks online at my yahoo, but sometimes I just dont want to go in and edit a webpage to save a bookmark if you know what i mean =)
Dropbox is a poor choice for what you want to do because it only syncs files inside your Dropbox folder, when what you want is a program that’ll sync things like your Thunderbird profile folder. Try Syncplicity or Mozy instead.
However, even with Syncplicity or Mozy, offline email syncing like that is clunky and not the best way to do this (because of possible collisions, etc.). Consider signing up for a Gmail account instead and either switching all your email to that address or having Gmail fetch your emails from the other account. Then you can just use Gmail, with all the same messages, on ANY machine, bypassing Thunderbird and its local data files altogether. If you must use Thunderbird because you like it a lot or whatever, consider setting it up to access Gmail with IMAP, which will give you the benefit of server-side storage along with a desktop client.
Lastly, for Firefox syncing, it’s easier just to use the official Firefox Sync extension rather than fiddling around with manual profile syncing (since Firefox is constantly writing and reading from its local database files, it’s harder for 3rd-party programs to sync right without screwing something up).
Actually moving Thunderbird into your dropbox folder is a bad idea, your registry pointers would become out of date. As ChrisBooth12 says you should just set up your email client on the three machines but remember to select to leave a copy of the messages on the server, that way the messages will still be there when the next PC connects. This is a good idea regardless of how many PCs you have as it protects against the loss of your emails in the event of a hard drive failure.
With regards to your bookmarks there are many websites that offer this service, Google have one or you might try mybookmarks.com .
But unlike gmail, my earthlink email account does have limits, and they will nastygram you for filling up your mailbox. it isn’t like I am one of those people who save every single email, i save about 10% of my emails - things like reciepts for online purchases, threaded correspondence I might need for customer service purposes, online accounts and such. I really don’t want that type of stuff online where someone can hack into it.
Let us just leave it at I refuse to use gmail for privacy issues, and refuse to leave my emails online where they can get hacked. I am very careful to change passwords, and protect myself behind firewalls and don’t click on random links [and now I don’t let my fucking roomie use my computers at all, when hers dies she has to get it fixed on her own] so I am way more confident that I wont get randomly leaked by idiot employees, or hacked into the way we keep hearing about all these companies losing entire hard drives of data to being left on a bus, or leaked by someone making money by selling info.
Again, I would rather find some way of synching my personal computing devices than leaving my stuff online. I just want to have my emails and bookmarks on all 3 computers. I will have a go at the firefox utility, though it didnt work for me last time - which i am convinced is a microshit vista vs xp issue. I had to damned near bash it with a sledgehammer to get it to grudgingly fileshare on the home network, using the internal network wizard bullshit. I could get the vista boxes talking to vistas and xps talking to xps, but the vistas and xps refused to play nice.
You sound a little paranoid. Nobody is going to hack your Gmail as long as you pick a sensible password and don’t give it out to anyone. It sounds like you’re just purposely making your life more difficult and then asking how you can make it easier without forgoing your self-imposed barricade.
One thing you could try, I make no guarantee that this will work, is using something like outlook and changing the location of your .pst file to the dropbox folder. I think you will be able to move the .pst file yourself and then go into Outlook and point your account to the new location. As long as all your email clients on the different machines point to your dropbox folder it should sync no problem (in theory).
I think you are being too paranoid however, as Rigmarole stated your emails will be safe on Google’s servers as long as your password is safe.
What makes you think your files are any safer on a password protected dropbox account than a password protected webmail account?
If you’re that paranoid you could run your own IMAP server and just have all your computers sync to that. Not the easiest solution, but it does mean you control the server.
All your email goes across the net in plaintext anyway, so it’s more likely to be intercepted in transit than when it’s sitting on a server. Email is the equivalent of shouting messages to each other in a busy room - most people won’t hear you, but it’s not really a medium for sensitive data (which is why online purchases and other such things only show partially censored data in emails they send to you).