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The Motorola Media Link desktop program is quite handy if you need to move files between your Android aka Droid phone, or if you’re a power Droid user and want to quickly and easily download photos and videos, music, and iTunes, you can even have it sync automatically each time you connect via USB PC cable too. You can find it here at this link Motorola Media Link Free Program. You can choose if you want it to have sync both ways or only one way PC>Droid or Droid>PC.

Installation

Installation is painless and easy with the .msi windows installer, this hopefully should not cause you any problems

Configuration

The program is easy to use, with a friendly straightforward user interface. *One word of warning make sure you don’t check the boxes to sync your files FROM your PC to the Droid as if you’re like most people you’ll probably end up having Media link trying to upload many Gigabytes worth of photos and video to the limited space on your Droid, but this might be what you want, just wanted to warn you first though as Media Link’s interface and default settings seem to want to point you in that direction. If you’re at all tech savvy the User Interface and settings should be fairly intuitive

1. Media Link program should be running if not click the new desktop icon
   
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2. Select or Unselect the Media File types you want to sync
   
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3. For each Media type you have selected you’ll want to then select/unselect if you want the program to sync from PC>Droid, Droid > or both PC<>Droid. As I said before you’ll want to be careful with syncing to the Droid from the PC as you could easily fill up your droid’s free space with pictures and videos etc from your PC  you already have on your computer.
   
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4. You can mark the checkbox if you want to have Media Link remove the items from your Droid after downloading, probably a wise choice for most.
   
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5. Under Tools>Preferences you can select to have it sync automatically every time you connect, for some reason this window wasn’t opening up for me sometimes when clicking on preferences, but after restarting the program a couple times it started showing up again, not sure what happened here either my PC or a small bug on that screen.
   
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6. *Optional, there’s also a useful backup/restore feature you’ll probably want to use, which is nice if you have other file types associated with apps you don’t want to loose, like audio files, or app specific files etc.  I haven’t tired it but I suspect you might be able to do a full restore of all your Droid settings and apps with this too, nice if you break or loose your phone and want to quickly get back up to speed. If you have tried doing a full restore and it worked please post in the comments below and let us know it works. And you can have it set to automatically start the backup process 1x week etc in the configuration.
   
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Usage

1. To actually sync you just click the “Sync” button after you open up the program, simple!
2. Or if you have it automatically syncing you’ll see Media Link starts when you connect your Droid to the USB PC cable
3. One critical step that I missed at first and thought Media Link was broken or something is that whenever you connect to the USB cable you will need to actually go to your phone and click on the USB symbol that pops up in the alert toolbar at the top and then click the “Turn on USB Storage” button.
   
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Conclusion

Motorola Media Link desktop program is easy to install, use and configure we think, we give it a thumbs up for ease of use and functionality, and a must have for power Droid users.

Connecting your beloved Droid to your computer so you can download and upload files like images, videos, voice recording, audiobooks etc is relatively easy on most computers

1. You’ll need your USB cable that connects to your phone, or charger if you have the combined USB cable/power adapter setup
2. Simply connected the Android droid phone to the PC, hopefully your computer will install the correct driver, if not and you see an alert about missing driver or you see a yellow exclamation mark, if not proceed to step #3. If the device is installed, you should be able to skip to step #4.
3. If your computer is not showing the droid in the “My computer” or Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Devices and Printers area, or you have a yellow ! exclamation mark, and it says driver not installed then go here to Motorola’s web site and download the Motorola USB Drivers and install the correct one for your operating system.  You may want to install the Motorola Media Link Free Program sync desktop program instead as an option. You’ll know it’s install correctly the driver installs and you get a windows notice that the device is now installed correctly.
4. Now to actually fully connect you need to go your droid and there should be a new USB icon in your alerts, click that and then click the  “Turn on USB storage” button, now you should get a windows autoplay alert like when you connect a camera etc asking you want you want to do, or if you want to do that every time you connect.
5. Now you should be able access Your Android phone by going to “My Computer” and opening and browsing throw the droid folders. The location of files may vary depending on which files you’re looking for and which version of the Droid you have
   1. Images and Videos on my Droid are stored here “DCIM\Camera”
   2. Some of your other apps like audible, or napster etc should have their own folders too if you need to upload or download any of these files manually

Other considerations

• You can optionally try out the Motorola Media Link Free Program to sync your files, images, videos etc between your device and computer PC as well. In my next post I will be reviewing Media Link desktop program to see how well it works or not.
• If you installed an SD card on your Droid Phone you’ll need to Mount/Unmount i.e “access the storage space” possibly also when connecting to your PC. Just like when accessing the native storage space on the Droid like we did in step #4 there  should also be an icon on the droid alert bar up top that a showing the USB connection. Don’t forget to dismount the USB connection when you’re finished or you won’t be able to see your SD card when using your Droid after it’s been connected to the PC.
• Also on the Motorola driver page is a link to download the “charging drivers”, I didn’t have a problem with either vista or windows 7 charging I simply just plugged in the USB cable to the computer and it would charge no problem, but if you have any trouble try installing the “charging drivers”