With the recent demise of my Mesh PC and the arrival of a brand-spanking-new Dell, I assumed my nice boxed edition of Office 2007 could be transferred across. I was wrong.

First of all, I thought I’d check whether I could, so I’d contact Microsoft – their EULA didn’t appear specific enough. Their contact page shows an 0844 number for contacting them (0844 800 2400). However, this appears, through a near-endless selection of options, seems to direct you to websites or to pay them to answer a technical query.

The option for activating licenses simple gives you a freephone number (0800 0188354), but this is an automated system for activation.

In the end, I emailed them using the address on the aforementioned contact page. They got back to me and, after much discussion on how I got the software and what the packaging looked like, I was told it was specific to that PC. You see,  when I bought the Mesh I plumped for the option for them to install it and send me the licence key. This would be easier than buying it separately, although it was about the same price.

I then sent off, for a small additional cost, to receive the DVD with the software on. So I now have a very official looking Microsoft DVD box, containing DVD and key. But Microsoft won’t transfer the licence.

So much for saving money.

Thankfully, my daughter has been saving for a laptop and wanted Microsoft Office – a retail 3 user licence is only £5 more than a 1 user licence. So I now have it on my home PC and on my Netbook (and my daughter will have it on her new laptop when she gets it). And, because it’s the retail edition I can transfer the licence keys.

But, I still have a perfectly good copy of Office 2007 which I can’t use or even sell. And Microsoft wonder why people don’t seem to like them? Grrrr.

For some time at home now I’ve been using a rather nice looking Hiper aluminium keyboard. It’s also very compact. Unfortunately, it’s also badly laid out and keys are never where you expect them to be.

It annoys me that high street PC magazines rarely cover essential items such as keyboards and mice, giving them only a fleeting comment when bundled with a PC.

So, after a recommendation on Twitter I bought a Microsoft Keyboard 600 – a wired affair (can’t see the point in wireless keyboards) – for a rather cheap £9.99. It’s spill resistant. It’s got a few extra keys. It’s quiet. Most importantly, it uses a standard keyboard layout. Hurrah!

Anyway, it turned up yesterday and it is excellent value for money. The keys have an excellent feel and it is quiet in use. I couldn’t tell from the specification but it has little feet on the rear, for those (like me) who don’t like having their keyboards flat on the desk.

It has a very handy calculator button next to the “lock” lights and across the top there are 4 media buttons (volume up, down, mute and play/pause). The keyboard is USB only and I’m running Windows XP – the keyboard (and media buttons) work immediately without any need for drivers (not that any come with it).  However, the volume doesn’t appear on screen – this can be corrected by installing Microsoft’s free IntelliType software, which adds extra functionality (e.g. remapping the keys).

The top row of keys (mainly Function keys) are half height but, as they’re hardly used, this isn’t a great issue. It’s just a shame that they shrunk the “Esc” key as well – there’s nothing above it, so it could have been full height without a problem.

For some time now I’ve used Microsoft’s Live Mesh software to synchronise folders across a number of computers. It’s a little tricky to set up at first but otherwise is relatively easy to use.

The idea is that you mark folder that you wish to add to the Mesh. On your other linked computers, it then creates matching folders where the data is shared. These folders aren’t short cuts, so even though you would have set one up initially on one computer, there is no “base” computer on which the data is held. “The cloud” is used to hold the data as it flows between the various computers.

However, for a good few days one of my PCs has only been synchronising one way, for no good reason. I tried un-installing and re-installing the program, but then it wouldn’t connect at all to Live Mesh.

To add insult to injury, upon un-installing a folder of file conflicts was generated by Live Mesh containing 11 files going back to August last year. I had thought that occasionally changes had gone missing, but as no conflicts had been flagged, I just assumed it wasn’t the case. Now I know otherwise. Indeed, un-installing Live Mesh on my 2 other computers also generated folders full of file conflicts.

So, the search was on for a replacement.

My initial investigations lead me to ZumoDrive. Now, ZumoDrive works in a different way to Live Mesh. Again you assign folders to share, but here you have a new mapped drive letter on which each shared computer appears with the shared folders under each. With Mesh there was no concept of which computer the data was coming from – it was all one shared “mass”. I’ll admit I wasn’t keen. None-the-less, ZumoDrive have an excellent matching Android App, which even separates out music and photos.

However, the initial synchronisation took forever – in fact it seemed to sit on “idle” with no transfer activity at all. On top of that some files transferred over with missing icons.

Next, I came to Dropbox. One of the most popular solutions, I’d initially avoided it because of the lack of a matching Android App¹. However, it’s the one I’ve settled with.

Dropbox is simplicity itself – maybe too simple for some people. Basically, it places a folder on your PC (wherever you wish to put it) and anything you place in it gets synchronised with your other PCs. And the best bit – it’s damn fast. The initial synchronisation of 10MB of data took no time at all, and file modifications have been almost instant. I’m very, very impressed.

Only one issue so far – after booting up one of my computers this morning it didn’t, even after a number of minutes active, pick up on a number of file changes that I’d made. It was only when I added something to the Dropbox folder on that computer did it transfer everything else. I’m sure it was just my impatience though…

Capacity is not a great issue for me as I’m only synchronising small amounts of data however it should be noted that Mesh provides 5GB and ZumoDrive and Dropbox 2GB. ZumoDrive initially provides 1GB and you have to perform a series of tasks to receive the extra 1GB. Dropbox does similar and you can continue to increase your capacity by signing up new customers.

1. although one is due soon [↩]