Outstanding synchronization tool: SugarSync review

March 19, Sharpcast has launched the public beta of its new file synchronization product, SugarSync. The product use is not free, but the quality and spec of operations makes it a real candidate for your investment.
Presenting you an article of David Pogue on the service overview:

If you have ever lost important computer files, you know about the five stages of grieving: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Moving to a Desert Island.

Yet even though the risk is well understood, only a tiny fraction of computer owners have automatic backup systems in place. The obstacles are known as Cost, Technical Setup and Being Kinda Busy.

The mental and technical obstacles get especially daunting if you have more than one computer, like a laptop, a home machine and a PC at the office. And it is almost hopeless if these machines are of different types - a Mac here, a PC there - because you may not be able to use the same backup software or service for all of them.

SugarSync, a new, automated Internet backup and synchronization service from a company called Sharpcast, was presented last week. It claims to solve these problems and many more.

Now, the truth is, I was not particularly interested in this service at first. For one thing, Internet backup services are a dime a dozen - and this one is $500 a year. That is for the maximum storage, 250 gigabytes. Less expensive plans are available for smaller amounts of data, like $10 a month for 30 gigabytes - still pricey, although all plans are half price if you sign up before April 15.

Furthermore, the name SugarSync is a bit unappetizing. Doesn’t “sugar” connote rotting teeth, hyperactive preschoolers and the obesity epidemic? What’s next - TransFatSync?

But never mind all that. SugarSync really is an impressive piece of work.

It starts out like any other Internet backup service: you install a backup program on each computer (called SugarSync Manager) and choose the folders that you want backed up. Clearly, the idea here is not to back up your entire hard drive - SugarSync does not offer enough storage for that - but instead, only your documents, music, photos and so on.

Once you click “O.K.,” the program quietly and automatically uploads the contents of your chosen folders to a personal, secure Web page that is dedicated to your stuff.

This is no simple online storage vault, however; your files are “live” on the Web. If you ever find yourself at a different computer - another one of your own machines, or even a borrowed one - you still have access to your files; you can just open them up from that Web repository. Assuming your borrowed Mac or PC has the necessary software to open a document (Microsoft Office, say), it opens, right from the Web.

If you edit the file you have opened, the changes are immediately sent back home to the original document on the originating computer. In other words, the Web acts as a great big reflector between the original Mac or PC and any others you use.

But wait, there’s more. The Manager software creates a very special folder, called Magic Briefcase, on each computer you use. Its contents are automatically kept in sync among all of the computers and the Web. In other words, this folder’s contents are always identical on every computer you own. Any change to any document on any one computer is reflected, within seconds, in the Magic Briefcase on all the other computers. (If a computer is turned off, the changes are made the next time it turns on.)

That is a huge help if you travel - within the building, the city or the country - because you can keep your important stuff there. You always have access to it, from any of your computers or even borrowed computers, thanks to the mirrored copy on the Web. Actually, you can, if you wish, set up any folder to be a “magic” folder. At this point, of course, you are getting into Complication Land, and leaving the immediately understandable concept of the one Magic Folder. But this any-folder syncing concept presents some intriguing possibilities.

For example, it means that your home and office computers, or upstairs and downstairs ones, or portable and stationary machines, or all of the above, can contain the same photos in Pictures, the same music in Music, the same documents in Documents, and so on. That’s a pretty slick trick. So if you are on the road and you download some of your digital camera’s photos to your laptop hard drive, you will find them safely backed up when you get home to your main computer.

SugarSync’s final trick, the one that leaves most rival services in the dust, has to do with another machine that you probably work with every day: your mobile phone. If you have an Internet-capable phone, you can visit m.sugarsync.com and view precisely the same list of Web folders that you’d see if you were using a computer. The list looks especially nice on an iPhone, which Sharpcast has given a special layout.

On most phones, you cannot actually do much with what you see. You cannot open an Excel spreadsheet and start editing it, for example. (The company says that it is working on that sort of feature.) Photos are the only thing you can open on the phone, although that’s nothing to sneeze at.

What you can do is select any document and forward it, unopened, to yourself or to anyone else, by e-mail message. You can probably remember a few times in your life when that option might have come in handy. If you have certain BlackBerry models (Curve, Pearl or the 8800 series) or a Windows Mobile smartphone, you can install a tiny version of the Manager program right on the phone, turning it into another one of your auto-synced computers. Documents you create or edit on the phone are mirrored on your SugarSync Web site and your other computers.

By far the coolest aspect of this feature is that those files can include photos. Any photos you take with the BlackBerry or Windows Mobile cameraphone are backed up automatically and wirelessly.

Now, it is fairly clear that SugarSync has just hobbled out of the gate with 1.0 status; the company has its work cut out for it. For example, you can choose to back up only folders that sit on your main internal hard drive - no secondary, external or networked drives are eligible. The Mac version is still in beta testing and has some minor bugs, and the service works only if you leave the Manager program running at all times. Even on the BlackBerry and Windows smartphones, your calendar and address book are not backed up, let alone synced - a strange omission. Sharpcast says that it plans to address many of these concerns in the coming months.

Even so, there is nothing else quite like this automated service. The software is elegantly and simply designed, which is good. And when you change a file and then close it, watching the modification ripple, in seconds, from one computer to another across the Web is good, clean, freaky fun.

When you try it, you will go through five very different emotional stages: Bafflement, Experimentation, Sudden Comprehension, Delight - and Showing Off to Your Buddies.

Sources and additional reading:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/26/technology/ptpogue27.php?page=1
http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9895297-2.html
http://www.sugarsync.com/