Just about everyone who has a fast broadband connection was given a homepage when they signed up. However, most people don't use this space and many of us believe that the space can only be used for their website.

Not so. This homepage is merely space on your ISP's server, which means that you could use it to store files and much more. You could use it for backing up your important data or simply to migrate and share files between your office and home computers.

For instance, at the end of every day you could leave your office machine running and setup an automated task that uploads your daily work to your remote space which you can then access at home. Once you've made changes, you can then place the files back on your homepage.

The best tool for this job is an FTP client, which enables you to simply select your server (probably something like http://yourisp.com/webspace), enter the username and password that were given to you when you were given your broadband (which means that only you can access the files) and log in to your remote homepage as if it was simply an external hard drive. You can then copy files to and from this space.

SmartFTP is an advanced FTP client that you can use for this purpose. It's best described as a multi-pane version of Windows Explorer, with your files on one side and your remote server on the other.

SmartFTP has a number of advanced features, like most FTP clients, such as the facility to resume broken downloads, background transfers and much more.

Note that SmartFTP used to be freeware (or free for personal use). It is now shareware.

The latest version (4.0) of SmartFTP now includes Windows 7 support, faster performance and transfer of files and many smaller improvements.