One of the things I've come to expect when being on the road is that there will be times when my data is somehow out of sync. I run a reasonably robust infrastructure in my home office with a NAS that I can access via FTP, a desktop system that I can access over the Internet using VNC and use shared data services between my desktop and laptop.

The problem is, when I'm away from the office for more than a few hours, something that happens practically every day, the information I have on my laptop and the information back home are out of sync. Some of this is easy enough to deal with. For example, if I add something to my diary and my wife needs to know, I have a shared calendar that automatically syncs to her computer. We use Macs and so i can do that by sharing an iCal calendar over MobileMe but the same can be achieved with Google Calendar at no cost.

With files that need to be kept in sync in near real time, I use the free Dropbox service. Any files I add, edit or delete from my laptop's Dropbox folder are automatically synced up to the "cloud" and back to other systems that are linked to the same Dropbox account. The free service is limited to 2GB, which is enough for my needs, but that can be upgraded to 50GB for $99USD.

FTP back to the office NAS works well enough although the initial set up does require some technical nous. Fortunately, in lieu of that, I found good instructions through Google! With that access, I can send and retrieve data to the office. It's particularly handy when I've forgotten something as I store everything on the NAS. Very little user data resides on the hard drives of the computers in my home or office.

So, I'm curious. What strategies do other folks have to avoid their data getting out of sync and fragmented when they're out and about? Do you use remote services to sync data or just do a manual sync when you're back in the office? Have you found a solution that you'd like to share? I'm keen to hear your thoughts.