Keeping files synchronised across different PCs is, frankly, a pain in the rump. You work on a document at home over the weekend, only to forget to drop it on a USB stick before Monday morning, and end up missing a deadline. Or you’ve got photo libraries stored on two different home PCs, with different albums in each.

Microsoft’s Live Mesh and online start-up Dropbox have come up with similar answers to this problem, offering online services that keep your files in synch across multiple PCs. Both are at the invite-only test phase at present, but we’ve wormed out way into the private betas. Here’s how they compare. (more…)