FolderShare is a free service from Microsoft that I use everyday to keep my files in sync over multiple computers including home, work, and several laptops. While I have had a few glitches, in general it has been a wonderful program. A few weeks ago Microsoft sent me a notification that they would be upgrading FolderShare and renaming it LiveSync. They also said that you would have to upgrade as the old FolderShare would no longer work.

Here’s the problem. When the notification came the other day, it was a demand. You must upgrade right now if you want to keep working. I have four computers and several co-workers sharing files with FolderShare. So I guess I was to drop everything and upgrade all at that moment. Well, it is now several days later, I have 3 of my computers working and will do the 4th soon.

This is, a good example of how Microsoft gets such a bad reputation. They often seem very demanding. I can’t however, really complain. This is a great program and it is free. Hopefully it will remain so.

For those of you upgrading to LiveSynch, you don’t have to uninstall FolderShare, just install the new software on all machines. After you install the software, you must start it working by choosing to run it from you program list. This seems slightly unintuitive since you would expect it to start automatically.

LiveSync is working fine on my 3 computers. The 4th one is a Server 2003 maching that I had trouble getting to work with FolderShare. I’ll soon see if LiveSync is any better and I’ll let you know.