This may be too specific for its own thread, and if so, I apologize. I've been dealing with an issue that I would guess more people have than actively talk about.

I play WoW on both a laptop and a desktop, and occasionally on an older computer at a different house. I also play several characters, which makes the setup even more tedious with regard to specific setups per character.

But setting up my UI/Keybindings/Addons and updating each time proves itself to be quite a pain (though WoWAceUpdater makes it significantly easier to set myself up quickly). Setting up unit frames, raid MT target positions, target of target, bar locations, bar paging for stealth, bar numberings, macros, etc has proven to be quite tedious. I suppose that I could, possibly, copy my Interface, and WTF/WDB folders onto a CD and bring it with me when I switch between computers to ease the process, but I'm also dealing with computers with vastly different capabilities, maximum resolutions, and, in the case of the laptop, aspect ratios.

Does anyone have any hints or tips for using WoW amongst multiple PCs (and no, playing without AddOns is unfortunately not an option at present), while reducing the tedium of set-up each time?

back in the days i played on a laptop and on a normal computer, all i did was copying the folders as you said, and then if i remember correctly i just had to do some minor tweaking.
However, the less addons you use, the easier it will get.
And when it comes about your keybinds, you'll probably have to take in consideration that different computers will have different keyboard shapes, so you might want to change some keybinds anyway to better suit your hand

Most the AddOns I use are Ace based, and most Ace AddOns have profiles built in. Since I only play from one machine, I just have a per-class profile that I use. However, I suppose you could make a profile(s) for each machine and just copy your WTF files across.

It's a shame that there isn't some kind of addon sync type tool that you could use. I use Google Browser sync in firefox and it is a godsend for using my browser on multiple PCs.

You can keep the installed mods in sync through brute force either by blowing the contents of your Addons directory to CD, or even better: to a flash pen drive. Very small to carry around, very quick. Or an MP3 player if it allows you to drop files on it as a mass storage device.

If your computers are networked, try getting rsync installed if you have the command line know-how to do it. It's much faster than complete copies.

The only real problem you have as far as I can see is you have different resolutions between computers. A lot of stuff is resolution-independent so this isn't a problem. If you have "UI scale" set (or just set differently between computers), this tends to screw up the coordinates for everything.

I usually ship the contents of my WTF/account and Interface/Addons directories to my brother's and parents' computers when I go to visit them for a few days, and I have absolutely no problems with where things end up on screen. There is a problem with differences in performance, but I never run any mod which is slow in the first place, even on my performance machines.

I've found that switching back and forth between a pc and laptop is much easier since i started packing my mouse and zboard fang gamepad into my laptop bag on trips.

Regarding streamlining the addon configurations... all I can really say is 'less is more.'

The only problem for me with that setup, Zoid, is that my laptop and desktop (the two machines I play on) are at different resolutions, so when I sync them, elements on the laptop are out of place or off-screen.

What I do (since the laptop is less important) is periodically transfer my addons and WTF folders from desktop to laptop and rescale/relocate elements of the UI as needed. I don't raid on my laptop, pretty much just quests and farming (integrated graphics blow), so it isn't a huge deal if the UI there isn't perfectly up to date.

Pony up and buy a better laptop .. but for a serious answer you could locate the places in the config files where the coordinates and resolution is stored and run a script or app to "hotfix" the values. It would be alot of work to go through and manually do this, but once it was setup it would be pretty maintenance free.

Then just sync your Interface/Addons folders and don't sync WTF/Account. The settings are in the Account folder, but you can still have your mods replicated.

Also I sync WTF/Account, not just the WTF directory. The Config.wtf file in WTF contains settings such as resolution and graphics. I do not sync that file.

I do run at different resolutions, but if you use UI scaling, it should still line up. The only time it doesn't is if one platform is widescreen and the other isn't. I'm fortunate in that at home I have 1920x1200 widescreen (Dell 24" 2407FPW) and at work I have 1680x1050 widescreen (Dell 22" 2005FPW) and my laptop is 1440x900. They are all different resolutions, but they are all widescreen have the same aspect ratio. I have to fiddle a bit with the UI scale setting to get it adjusted, but once done all my UI element position and settings are the same on all the platforms.

If you're running at the same aspect ratio on the different machines, all you'd have to do is sync the AddOns and Accounts folders (set the options in Config.wtf seperately, but only have to do it once), either manually or through one of many programs available (both of my machines are on my LAN, so I just use SyncToy that's freely available from Microsoft as part of WinXP PowerToys).

If the machines use different aspect ratios screens... I'd probably just run one of them in windowed mode at a resolution with the "correct" ratio. I tried before to keep UI current on 3 different resolutions/aspect ratios (1600:1200 4:3, 1280x1024 5:4, 1440x900 16:10), and it was a disaster.

Hmm. I'll have to play with it, since I have widescreen in both locations.