I work with a linux machine at home, and windows 7 at the office. Here’s some of the bits and pieces I use to keep data synchronised as needed. LastPass and XM

I work with a linux machine at home, and windows 7 at the office. Here’s some of the bits and pieces I use to keep data synchronised as needed. LastPass and XMarks to keep passwords and bookmarks synced across both (and across browsers as I use both Chrome and Firefox). Dropbox. In particular, I run Pidgin for my instant messaging (with skyp4pidgin) on and encfs encrypted fuse file system. (On the Windows side, I use Boxcrypter Classic for encfs.) I also use Dropbox to push repositories back and forth (I use Mercurial for that, but Git would be just as good.) If I didn’t need to use Dropbox for sharing some common folders with others, I would consider SpiderOak and then not worry about encfs. On the work machine, I have a fairly large TrueCrypt file container that holds my Firefox profile and Chrome user data, Dropbox folder and any other data I don’t want other users of the computer to be able to access when I’m not there. I can also ssh to my home machine from the office, which is handy if I’ve forgotten something. I also use it for running rsync and/or unison as appropriate one some data (got to keep that office music collection in sync!). Cygwin on Windows for rsync and unison clients (as well as a bash terminal.) I can also ssh to linux machines at work from home, and use x2go to rdesktop/vnc to office machines when I need to occasionally. Have found this much faster than alternatives (rdesktop/vnc over VPN, or xpra). Hope that gives some ideas of things you could try if a full VM image shuttling back and forth does not work for you.