The Pros and Cons of Synching Your Devices

Over the past decade as people have become increasingly dependent on multiple devices that require a constant connection to the internet, which has made syncing devices more common. Whether it’s your smartphone or your console, using multiple devices with the same user settings makes juggling between devices easier.

However, syncing your devices has pros and cons, just like everything else. If you aren’t aware of how synching affects you and your devices, here’re the most common pros and cons you need to be aware of.     

Pros of Synchronizing Devices

Easy Access

The biggest advantage synching devices give you is easy access to your files across multiple platforms. For example, by syncing your smartphone and desktop, you can access files on your PC through your smartphone. This ease of access means you longer have to worry about saving or transferring files and folders across multiple devices for accessibility.

Collaboration

A big advantage of synching devices in a work or study space is that it allows multiple people to collaborate on the same project. For example, a writer and an editor can collaborate on the same document, even if they aren’t on the same device. This alone has revolutionized many industries and workspaces as tasks no longer have to be queued one after another.

Over the last two years, many workers have benefitted from successfully collaborating from home, which in no small way can be attributed to device syncing.

Backup

Synching your devices also allows you to create backups of your files and folders across multiple devices without having to transfer them manually. This easily allows you to recover lost data from other devices if your currently used device is damaged or lost.

In case you lose data because your device isn’t synced to a network and had a hard drive failure, it’s still possible to recover the lost data. But you will need dependable computer repair services to do so as advanced data recovery procedures will have to be performed on the faulty hard drive.  

Easy Setup

Most modern devices will ask for your permission to sync with other devices when setting it up, provided the device has sync options. New devices can simply be synched to your pre-established settings for your other devices, helping you avoid long and tedious set-up times. This is especially useful in an office with multiple machines.

The benefit of having an easy set up for synching devices has allowed educational institutions and industries worldwide to function properly over the last two years of the pandemic. In particular, the software and SAAS industry has significantly benefited from this technological functionality.

Cons of Synchronizing Devices

Data Privacy

The first con of synching devices is that it makes all the devices in the network it belongs to highly vulnerable. Any devices synced to a network can come under cyberattack or malware infection at any given moment. If that happens, then the hacker can also gain access to other devices in the network. In case of malware infections, other network devices can also become infected.

Unfortunately, there is no best way to combat this problem since different devices in a sync network have different vulnerabilities. The best you can do is ensure all devices in a network have optimal protection and hope for the best.   

Data Cost

Another thing to consider when it comes to syncing data is your internet bill. In most instances, you will require an unlimited broadband subscription to feasibly manage the costs of simultaneously duplicating data on multiple devices. You will quickly find your internet bill skyrocketing if you’re running on a limited internet package.

While the problem can somewhat be mitigated by individual users who can choose which data they want to sync, this is often not an option for companies and educational institutions. So this only becomes a major issue if you’re running a business or an organization that relies heavily on data storage. Many ISP providers consider this and have corporate package offers.

Keeping Things Balanced

Now that you know the pros and cons of synching your devices, you should have an easier time deciding when and where to sync your devices. 

As a rule of thumb, keep at least one device you own unsynced so that it doesn’t get affected by virus and malware attacks, and manually transfer data and files to it on a weekly basis. That way, you’ll have taken all scenarios into account.