Pros & Cons
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- One account covers multiple computers and devices.
- Good security, including self-destruction in event of theft.
- Simple, replicated virtual local and online drive.
- File sharing with password and expiration.
- View docs and photos on mobile browser version.
- Reasonable price.
- Outlook plugin.
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- No automated backup features.
- No version saving.
- No file locking for teams.
- Takes up lots of disk space.
Nomadesk 4.0 Specs
| OS Compatibility: | Mac OS |
| OS Compatibility: | Windows 7 |
| OS Compatibility: | Windows Vista |
| OS Compatibility: | Windows XP |
| Tech Support: | |
| Tech Support: | phone (CET office hours) |
| Tech Support: | Web chat |
| Type: | Business |
| Type: | Personal |
| Type: | Professional |
There are plenty of online storage, 
) and 
). It's not as capable as the SugarSync but more so than the DropBox. For just $50 per year, you get file storage (limited in size only by your available local disk) and synchronization that lets you access files from PCs, Macs, and mobile browsers. Unlike the major online backup providers, there's no help deciding what to back up, and it doesn't automatically save previous versions of files. Its approach to online backup differs from services like 
), but it will appeal to those who care more about file access than automated backup and versioning.
The $50 a year personal file server option I tested gives a virtual server with sync, backup, sharing, collaboration, and mobile access. There's also a Team version ($15 per month) that offers more features and well as space. It syncs an unlimited number of computers, shares with unlimited guests, lets you send a public link to an entire folder for sharing, and lets you publish folders on a blog or site and upload via e-mail. But space on the virtual fileserver is limited to the size of the connected smallest disk.
Setup and Signup
You can use Nomadesk purely as a Web service, but you'll get more out of it if you install the desktop software which is compatible with
After signing up, I was presented with the option to create a Personal or Team Fileserver, and I decided to create one of each. The file server for each lives as a drive letter on your desktop. Next I got a notice stating that my account would self-destruct should my laptop be stolen—a feature every online storage and backup service should have. Security is a strong point with throughout service: When you haven't logged into the dashboard, your files are encrypted and the virtual drive they reside on is invisible.
The small dashboard window showed my two fileservers as "In Sync," and the app launched my Web browser and opened a tutorial that serves as a quick way to wrap your head around Nomadesk concepts.
Working with Nomadesk
The service is similar to a workplace fileserver that creates a drive on your system that's duplicated in the cloud. Anything you copy to your local Nomadesk drive is automatically backed up at Nomadesk's storage site. Team servers can be accessed by multiple users, whereas Personal file servers are for you and you alone (they can, however, be upgraded to team servers). Both appear as drives in Windows and Mac desktops.
You can access Nomadesk functions from Nomadesk's tray icon, by right clicking on its drive icon, and by simply running the Dashboard. From each drive's representation in the Dashboard, I could open, sync, disconnect, choose files to ignore, and see its activity log and properties. In the properties dialog, I could see and change the drive letter assignment and synchronization interval—for example, you can set the sync interval from 1 to 60 minutes and that for file changes from 3 to 999 seconds. The tray icon changes color to indicate sync status.
My new drives were initially populated with just the Nomadesk Getting Started PDF. Oddly, there's no folder structure, putting the onus on the user to create one. I'd like to see something like Windows Docs, Pictures, Videos, Explorer folders, at least. The proposition gets even hairier when you're working with a Team server, because when any member changes the folders, they'll change for everyone else in the team. The team account is also limited to the size of the smallest hard drive on the team.
Nomadesk does add some Windows Explorer integration, but it's minimal. A right click only opens the service's dashboard, but doesn't let you add files or folders to your Nomadesk virtual cloud drive. I added a folder with bunch of photos by dragging it to my virtual drive's Windows Explorer entry. I had no trouble opening the pictures on another PC in a browser and on a Mac with the client installed.—
Backup
Though you can use it for online backup, Nomadesk doesn't provide any help with automating the process, choosing which files to backup, or scheduling backups. It also doesn't automatically save previous versions of files you've edited from its virtual folder. It lets you manually create "revisions," but these revisions must be created specifically, versions aren't created each time you save a file. The SpiderOak sync service and any online backup service worth its salt save previous file versions, usually for 30 days. Not Nomadesk.
Team server users may run into problems, too, as there's no file locking. This could lead to sync errors if one team member saves a version after another.
Web Access to Files
By logging into your Nomadesk Web account, you can check out your fileservers and browse their folders, add folders, play a slideshow of uploaded photos, and see revisions of documents saved multiple times with changes (although the desktop client didn't have this capability when I tested). You can upload files to your virtual folders using drag-and-drop if you've got Java installed, but this doesn't work in the main Web folder view, just in an upload dialog.
A handy way to get files onto your Nomadesk server if you're away from the computer is to e-mail it directly to the server using an address like foldername@fileserver.nomadesk.com.
Sync
By default, Nomadesk uses a synchronization interval of 5 minutes—far more frequent than most online backup services, which typically upload backups just once a day. And it will sync file changes after 5 seconds; again, that's quite punctual. I used my mixed 100MB file batch to test the service's upload time over a basic 1.5Mbps DSL connection. Nomadisk doesn't compress files while uploading, so it doesn't need as much time to process files as online backup services like Mozy, which do compress. But the file sizes, of course, are larger.
My 100MB test file batch took 22 minutes to upload—a couple minutes more than the compressing services. After the first upload, as with those services, Nomadesk only uploads changed portions of files, which is much faster. And the service didn't slow down my hardly-powerhouse Dell XPS M1330 laptop. You can't tell the program just to sync when your computer is idle, so I can see how a large new file might slow down your system.—
Sharing files
Nomadesk lets you share files via a link with its FileLink feature. Available as a right-click option on file entries in either the desktop folder or Web interface, FileLink lets you enter the recipient's e-mail and optionally specify whether you want a receipt e-mail and password protection. You can also specify the number of days the link will be valid, and a maximum number of downloads. To make entering e-mail addresses easier, you can import Outlook or Gmail contacts, and autosuggests will drop down when you start typing a recipient's name.
FileLink works well, but it's not particularly better than the free drop.io, Microsoft SkyDrive, or YouSendIt's equivalent capabilities. Nomadesk's recently announced Outlook plug-in for sharing files will save your outboxyou're your correspondents' inbox from huge attachments. That's not a new idea, though; Drop.io has this, as does YouSendIt, and Adobe for its Acrobat.com service.
Mobile
Nomadesk offers no specific mobile clients, but I could log in through the mobile Web version (mynomadesk.mobi) on my iPhone's Web browser. I could traverse my folders, open images and Office documents, and even use the slideshow feature. I could also copy or move files to different folders, send a share link, and rename or remove them. There was one limitation: I couldn't upload files to my virtual servers. It would be great to have an iPhone app that lets you sync pictures you've taken with the mobile device to your Nomadisk drive, as SugarSync does.
Support
A big green button on the Nomadesk webpage offers live support with an engineer in a chat window. There's also e-mail and phone support (CET office hours only). For a Web service, these avenues are quite generous. Indeed, I got a tech rep in my chat box in seconds.
If the idea of anywhere access to your digital assets appeals to you, Nomadesk is worth checking out. After all, spending $50 per year to sync a full hard drive's worth of data is a much better deal than the Syncplicity's $15 a month for 50GB. It's also cheaper than PC Mag Editors' Choice Dropbox, which costs $100 a year for 50GB. While Nomadesk and SugarSync offer more features than the drop-dead simple Dropbox, they lack its simplicity (and its support for Linux, if you swing that way). Still, it's a worth a look. Test Nomadesk using the 30-day free trial account to see if you can live with the lack of automated backup, file versioning, and file locking.
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Final Thoughts
Nomadesk 4.0
Nomadesk goes beyond other syncing and file-sharing services, creating a complete virtual disk. But it doesn't automate the process or automatically save versions the way "traditional" online backup services do. If you just want a virtual drive synced to your PCs and the cloud, Nomadesk is worth a look.