Here's a way to sync your laptop and desktop data. I will share with you a solution I use, and it works great for me.

I use a 2GB pen drive, it cost under $20. On it I have many "portable apps", with a portable app menu. When I put this pendrive in any Windows PC, it will start up the portable apps menu and it becomes resident on the right of the task bar/system tray. You can click the portable apps menu just like the start menu and all of the pen apps will display for launching. There are many portable apps that are compatible with the Microsoft suite.

One thing I had to do is when I put my pen drive in *any* computer I check for the drive letter assigned to it, your computer will automatically assign the drive letter, but you can permanently change it (on each computer-one time) to what you like. I have chosen drive letter "H:" and it seems to work without conflict wherever I go. This is important if you plan on keeping your data on the pen drive too, as applications like to look at the same place for the data. 2GB is a lot of space. I keep all the portable apps, the data, all of my website files, plus a few programs that do not work on the pendrive that must be installed (I have some editors that do not work on portable drive, so I have to install them on the computer if they are not already there [as they are installed on my laptop and desktop, just not other computers]). For applications like Word/Excel, they must be installed on the computer, but aren't they anyway? I haven't had an issue with that yet.

Sounds confusing maybe, but I love it. I can walk up to nearly any computer, and put in my pen drive and everything I need is on the pen drive. My browser (FireFox), and Email (Thunderbird), and even portable roboform! (I've learned to love that program thanks to Michael) if you go to the portable apps website, you'll see there quite a bit of portable software out there... and all the stuff I use is free.

I hope that helps, let me know if you have any questions. Note that there is *NO* syncing, your data is always in one place.. oh, and backups are easy!.. Just copy the entire contents to my hard drive.