Lifesort organisational and backup software

Lifesort allows files from a PC to be uploaded to the internet and accessed from any internet-connected PC. Similar services are available but Lifesort says it's a bit cleverer than others.

A program installed on the computer transfer files to the service. The program adds a 'dock' to the Window desktop, which contains a series of colour icons representing categories that can be customised. When the mouse pointer hovers the icons they enlarge to reveal sub-categories and pop-out windows you can drag and drop files into.

The files are synchronised with Lifesort online and are then accessible from any internet-connected PC through the Lifesort website, which mimics the look of the desktop program. Files can be shared with other users by entering an email address or importing a contact from Facebook. This is a major benefit but it requires that the recipient registers for Lifesort – if they are not registered they will be sent an email asking them to do so. Other than that sharing worked well and was easy to do.

Storing files online was a simple case of customising categories, dragging the files into the category windows and clicking the Sync button. This was straightforward but we found it easy to forget to click Sync after dragging a file into a Lifesort folder, meaning the latest version would not be synchronised. Manually synchronising more than a few files was quite time consuming.

You can open files within Lifesort and changes are instantly reflected in the online versions. Unfortunately, finding a particular file using the program's search tool was trickier than it should have been – the program didn't find our test file until we tweaked the settings, and we had to manually set this each time we wanted to search.

In common with online backup services such as Mozy (see Also Consider), Lifesort offers 2GB of storage free. For extra space, it charges a fee ranging from £24 per year for 5GB to £60 for 50GB.

Some features are only available to paying customers. Quick Flip allows thumbnails of commonly viewed web pages to be seen at a glance in a single window and then loaded directly, but it was spoiled when some of the pages did not display. Lock allows categories to be password-protected and the Desktop function arranges desktop icons by type, which we didn't find particularly useful.

Lifesort's different way of working with files – where they are stored online and accessed when you need them – works well, but it can be fiddly to keep files synchronised and the sharing, one of the most useful features, is limited to Lifesort users only.

The program is certainly worth a try, but its flaws make it less impressive than it could have been.