Microsoft recently announced a major refresh of its Windows Live Foldershare service.

Of course, some of you may use the service already, but for those who don’t, we’ll look at what it offers, how it works and, just as important, some of the things it can’t do.

Peer-to-peer sharing
Purchased from the original developer, Byte Taxi, back in 2005 and little changed since then, Foldershare is a peer-to-peer file-sharing and synchronisation service.

A hosted Windows Live server manages access and co-ordinates all the synchronisation and transfers, which can be local or over the internet, with security in each case provided by SSL and AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption.

Foldershare is free and offers a number of useful facilities. For example, it allows you to synchronise documents held on a home or office desktop with those on a notebook when travelling.

Any changes made while out and about can then be automatically applied to the desktop PC and vice versa, with manual updates if preferred.

You can also give friends and colleagues access to your Foldershare libraries with either automatic or manual synchronisation. It’s also possible to remotely access a computer that’s logged onto Foldershare and get to all of its files from any other system, via an internet connection and a browser.

The latest refresh doesn’t really add any more functionality beyond this, but Foldershare’s website is now more efficient. The GUI has been updated to match those of other Windows Live services and the Foldershare client redesigned to make it simpler to use, with full support for Windows Vista also added.

Getting started
The first thing you have to do is install the Foldershare client onto an initial PC ­ typically a home or office desktop system ­ containing the documents you want to share and synchronise.

Simply browse the Foldershare website, then click the Getting Started button to go to a download page with links for both Windows and Apple Mac clients. Click the required link and either install the client directly or save it to disk and run it at your leisure.

Installation is quick and, once finished, there’s a setup wizard to help complete the configuration. This will ask if you’re signed up with a Foldershare account or whether you want to create a new one before configuring the client to connect with those credentials. A taskbar icon is then started every time you log on to Windows, to show that the client is up and running.

The same client can be installed on the other PCs you want to use, which would normally be configured to log on using the same Foldershare credentials. Management of the libraries through which folders are synchronised is then done via the Foldershare website.