Is it possible to share the same user info/mail etc on another networked computer

B

barrowman

Registered
My home is blessed with two apple laptops, My wife usually has her ibook upstairs next to the bed, whilst mine usually stays overnight in the study. Now I have a user set up on her machine, so I can receive mail etc, however I would really love to be able to log-in on her machine, and have access to my details, ie mail inbox, outbox, address book, bookmarks etc.

Also so that when I do download mail, etc it will be on my "proper" computers inbox when I start that up?

Is this possible? What solutions are there, that would allow me to do this. I run a wireless network and do have a .mac account.

Would I need OSX server to run such an ideal, or is there a cheaper way, that's not too much fuss

Thanks in advance.
 
What you just described is a client-server scenario, where user data isn't stored on local machines -- it's stored on the server, readily available to that user no matter which machine they use to log on. You'll need Mac OS X Server and another Macintosh capable of running it to get this type of scenario.
 
What you just described is a client-server scenario, where user data isn't stored on local machines -- it's stored on the server, readily available to that user no matter which machine they use to log on. Unfortunately, you'll need Mac OS X Server and a machine capable of running it to get this type of scenario.

There are ways around it, but they are cumbersome. You can use iSync to accomplish part of it and Backup to accomplish the rest, but it's not a one or two step operation. You can dabble with rsync and othe synchronization utilities, but each program stores data differently, and therefore syncing Mail would be different than syncing Address Book Info, and so on.

For Mail, one thing you can try is if your server is a POP server, check the "Leave messages on the server" checkbox in the Account preferences in Mail. That way, when you download mail on one machine, it'll still be on the server so when you log onto the other machine, it'll download those unread messages. If your accounts are IMAP, then all mail is stored on the server anyway, so set up the accounts on both machines identically and it should work.
 
If your ISP supports IMAP you can use that. The email files are never stored on your local computer unless you specifically move them to a local folder. Otherwise they are resident on the IMAP server at your ISP until you delete them. The downside of this is you can easily run out of allowed disk space on the IMAP server and either have to delete messages or buy more disk space.

As far as synchronizing all the other stuff iSync can do the job for you but it works through a .Mac account. By-the-way the .Mac email account is IMAP by default although you can set it up as a regular POP account if you prefer.
 
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