I would like to hear from users of foldershare as to what alternatives are
out there. Notwithstanding the Foldershare team's efforts, it seems that
Foldershare isn't a priority for Microsoft. I can't imagine a situation
where Google would say, "hey we are down for 48 hours for maintenance". This
just doesn't fly. Obviously they don't have the resources to keep this
awesome application running 24/7/365, which is disappointing. By as much as
a fan that I am, I have to face facts and move on to something else. Readers
please suggest alternatives with pros and cons. Thanks in advance.

After two years of using FolderShare, I am trying BeInSync. I am using the
paid "Business" version of BeInSync. To make things easier for it, I
manually transferred all of the files so all of the machines (4 of them)
would have an identical copy of the data to start. Everything is on a LAN
behind a router using NAT.

The data is about 7,000 files totalling 3.8 Gb.

Initial impressions after a day (!) of trying to get it to work:

(1) It does not like to get too much work at once. I tried to set up four
computers at once with all of the data, and all of the computers showed huge
backlogs of data to synchronize that looked like they would never finish.
Rebooting caused the backlogs to double, so that was definitely a bad idea.
I uninstalled and started over adding computers one at time and letting each
one fully sync.

(2) It does not sync nearly as smoothly as FolderShare There are often long
delays before a file syncs, and some files for no apparent reason do not get
updated until you kick them again by renaming or moving them. This is of
course a big problem, but I am hoping (probably foolishly) that it will go
away once I have it up and running.

(3) The amount of synchronization activity seems to go up very fast as the
number of computers involved goes up. With just two computers, it was
pretty quick. When I added the 4th computer, it took a very long time to get
it synced.

(4) It crashes surprisingly often. I have seen four crashes so far today.

(5) The automatic backup feature is nice and seems to work well. The
encryption feature is *disabled* by default, so you will want to change this
in the options before you back up the data.

(6) One of the benefits of the more expensive "Business" version is supposed
to be telephone support, but if they have a U.S. telephone number, I couldn't
find it on the web site.

(7) One reason for the slow performance might be that it wants me to change
our router settings to set up port forwarding on port 5584, which they
recommend "for best performance", although there is no indication of how
important this is. The problem is, they require a separate dedicated port
for *each* computer, and they all have to be configured in the router, and
each computer needs its dedicated port assignment specified in the settings.
This means that every time you move computer, get a different IP address, or
just connect through a different network (i.e., wireless), you have to go
into your port settings. (Their article is here:
http://www.beinsync.com/firewall_nat_settings.php).

Having to jump through these kinds of hoops to connect through a NAT router
is insane.

Overall, pretty disappointing.

"pbx" wrote:

> I would like to hear from users of foldershare as to what alternatives are
> out there. Notwithstanding the Foldershare team's efforts, it seems that
> Foldershare isn't a priority for Microsoft. I can't imagine a situation
> where Google would say, "hey we are down for 48 hours for maintenance". This
> just doesn't fly. Obviously they don't have the resources to keep this
> awesome application running 24/7/365, which is disappointing. By as much as
> a fan that I am, I have to face facts and move on to something else. Readers
> please suggest alternatives with pros and cons. Thanks in advance.

You must not use Blogger!

"pbx" wrote:

> I would like to hear from users of foldershare as to what alternatives are
> out there. Notwithstanding the Foldershare team's efforts, it seems that
> Foldershare isn't a priority for Microsoft. I can't imagine a situation
> where Google would say, "hey we are down for 48 hours for maintenance". This
> just doesn't fly. Obviously they don't have the resources to keep this
> awesome application running 24/7/365, which is disappointing. By as much as
> a fan that I am, I have to face facts and move on to something else. Readers
> please suggest alternatives with pros and cons. Thanks in advance.

Wow! What a lot of negative points compared to a running version of
foldershare...
--
Zimmermann


"d9kt" wrote:

> After two years of using FolderShare, I am trying BeInSync. I am using the
> paid "Business" version of BeInSync. To make things easier for it, I
> manually transferred all of the files so all of the machines (4 of them)
> would have an identical copy of the data to start. Everything is on a LAN
> behind a router using NAT.
>
> The data is about 7,000 files totalling 3.8 Gb.
>
> Initial impressions after a day (!) of trying to get it to work:
>
> (1) It does not like to get too much work at once. I tried to set up four
> computers at once with all of the data, and all of the computers showed huge
> backlogs of data to synchronize that looked like they would never finish.
> Rebooting caused the backlogs to double, so that was definitely a bad idea.
> I uninstalled and started over adding computers one at time and letting each
> one fully sync.
>
> (2) It does not sync nearly as smoothly as FolderShare There are often long
> delays before a file syncs, and some files for no apparent reason do not get
> updated until you kick them again by renaming or moving them. This is of
> course a big problem, but I am hoping (probably foolishly) that it will go
> away once I have it up and running.
>
> (3) The amount of synchronization activity seems to go up very fast as the
> number of computers involved goes up. With just two computers, it was
> pretty quick. When I added the 4th computer, it took a very long time to get
> it synced.
>
> (4) It crashes surprisingly often. I have seen four crashes so far today.
>
> (5) The automatic backup feature is nice and seems to work well. The
> encryption feature is *disabled* by default, so you will want to change this
> in the options before you back up the data.
>
> (6) One of the benefits of the more expensive "Business" version is supposed
> to be telephone support, but if they have a U.S. telephone number, I couldn't
> find it on the web site.
>
> (7) One reason for the slow performance might be that it wants me to change
> our router settings to set up port forwarding on port 5584, which they
> recommend "for best performance", although there is no indication of how
> important this is. The problem is, they require a separate dedicated port
> for *each* computer, and they all have to be configured in the router, and
> each computer needs its dedicated port assignment specified in the settings.
> This means that every time you move computer, get a different IP address, or
> just connect through a different network (i.e., wireless), you have to go
> into your port settings. (Their article is here:
> http://www.beinsync.com/firewall_nat_settings.php).
>
> Having to jump through these kinds of hoops to connect through a NAT router
> is insane.
>
> Overall, pretty disappointing.
>
> "pbx" wrote:
>

> > I would like to hear from users of foldershare as to what alternatives are
> > out there. Notwithstanding the Foldershare team's efforts, it seems that
> > Foldershare isn't a priority for Microsoft. I can't imagine a situation
> > where Google would say, "hey we are down for 48 hours for maintenance". This
> > just doesn't fly. Obviously they don't have the resources to keep this
> > awesome application running 24/7/365, which is disappointing. By as much as
> > a fan that I am, I have to face facts and move on to something else. Readers
> > please suggest alternatives with pros and cons. Thanks in advance.