Hi Guys

Thought I'd put out a review for Sugarsync seeing I've been playing with it for a little while now.

First of all, sugarsync is a file synchronising package similar to dropbox but its in final release stages (mac component is still beta) whilst dropbox is in beta. Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to do any comparitive testing with dropbox, I asked to be added to their beta and they haven't got back to me.

Alright so how does it work?

Well, it creates a folder on your machine called "Magic Briefcase". On top of that, you have the option to select individual folders you want shared and select only those folders. In our case, we decided to trail it as a virtual server for collaborative sharing of documents because most of our staff are located remotely and never come into the office. Having to setup a server with VPN access was a mission so with $29/year for 10GB, it seems reasonable as an option and we decided to trial it to see if it was any good. We can store sales documents, contracts, software (sap gui etc) and any of the staff can access this remotely via the sugarsync gui or from a website with username and password access.

It also has various forms of syncing, something called a soft sync where the files appear in your sugarsync gui, but aren't actually downloaded to your machine, or a hardsync where everything in the folders is downloaded and you can use different types of syncs for the different folders, for example:

Magic Briefcase - Hard Sync
Software - Soft Sync
Photos - Soft Sync

Within these areas, you could have sub folders as well, so magic briefcase in our particular case contains:

Sales Documents
Contracts
Generation Documents

...and these can obviously have sub-folders.

What is like in practice?

In practice it actually works damn well. You can add a file and it is synced real time to all the machines. I can see as a file is added and I can see the system synchronising. I tried moving files around and they appear on my windows machine straight away. Overall we are very impressed with it and I think we will probably end up purchasing it at the end of the trial.

I may even get a separate account for myself as a backup point for some data I may want to keep backed up externally.

Current Shortfalls

The current shortfalls of the product are as follows (and I think its because it was designed for person who has multiple machine to synchronise their files rather than multiple people or a company file synchronising)

• No file or folder security - i.e. you can't limit access to particular folders so that some of the machines (or people) can access them, its all or nothing. This means if you want to share on some information with some people in your company this solution won't work for you
• Web access is slow from some locations - we tested access from another country and it was not the fastest but we're not sure whether that could be their connection
• No versioning - I think it would be a nice tough to allow people to create new versions of documents if more than one person can access the document

I'll add some screen dumps of what the product looks like later.

I'm loving Dropbox, its Finder integration is really tight. I have 7 invites left for anyone who wants one.

I would be grateful of a dropbox invite

Thanks

I'd love to get one of those invites if you have one spare

I also would love a beta invite would be great for TAFE.

yes please me 2

Send me one as well. I'd be interested to do a comparison between dropbox and sugarsync.

This shows what sugarsync looks like. Not sure what the charges are going to be like on Dropbox, they haven't announced pricing yet so that would also make an interesting comparison. Dropbox seems a little more graphically friendly based on the video on their website.

Anyway, here are some screenshots of sugarsync showing what it looks like:

Sugarsync added to the top menu


In the finder. This is actually a folder created under Documents called Magic Briefcase although you can specify any other folders to sync as well.


Allowing for the addition of other folders (excuse the blank, I erased personal machine info)


The sugarsync mac gui


The web address for accessing documents


Overall, based on use of the product and what the dropbox cam looks like, I'd say dropbox has a better look to it, but I can't compare functionality of dropbox as I haven't tested it. I can say that the sugarsync setup works very well. We've been using it in a productive type environment to share business files between a couple of business users and it works 100% as advertised, no issues, no crashes, ultra fast, sychronisation is real time (I've watched it update documents real time in 3 separate VM's when we did initial testing).

We'll continue with Sugarsync until the end of the trial, if it continues to work as well, we'll buy it. At the moment, dropbox doesn't feature simply because it isn't public release yet so we can't buy it now and we have no idea what the pricing is like so we can't commit to it either.

Without being negative about Dropbox (simply because I haven't tested it), so far I can say I give sugarsync a big thumbs up.

Invite sent to fulltimecasual (who PM'd me with his email address). MissionMan, craigd, gaehl, grfxninja and rob05 PM me your email addresses and I'll send the invites. After that I'll only have one invite left for the first person to PM me their email.

At the moment, while in beta, Dropbox is limited to 2GB of files and only the Dropbox folder (which is created by the software in your home folder) is synced. The final version will have different tiers of paid syncing (prices not released at this stage) and the ability to sync 'watched' folders. However, the final version will still have a limited, free version, but the developers - who hang out a lot in the Dropbox forums - have stated that the beta testers will be rewarded with larger free accounts than normal at the end of the beta period. Currently versions of Dropbox are available for OSX (10.4 and over) and Windows (XP and Vista), a version for Linux is said to be in the pipeline. Check out the intro video on the homepage.

Sent, received, and now underway

I also now have 10 invites if anybody else is looking for one when dagaz run's out of them.

Thanks! Invite received! PM me for invites people.

thanks dagaz, of all the services i've seen like this, Dropbox is by far the most elegant and simple.

i'll give one invite to the next dude that posts here.

Could I please get one of those invites as nothing has come out of the first try.

i'll invite ya dude, as long as you invite the next dude that asks.

pm me your emails.

No problems with giving an invite to whom ever comes next

PM sent

I'm after an invite also: alan@aussiegeek.net