How Are People Using Sync 1.4?

[KevinFu]

We're looking for people to share how they use Sync in their day-to-day lives. Perhaps you have an interesting trick, or a unique way of using the product that you'd like to talk about. We have a weekly column on our blog that spotlights our users and how they're using Sync; If you're open to this, let us know how you use the product HERE: http://forum.bittorrent.com/forum/96-sync-stories/
 
Once you've clicked the link above, please create a NEW topic for each story (rather than replying), if you choose to share. 

[ChrisH]

Does "I don't use it because the UI sucks and I cannot run it portable anymore" count? It's a story, alright... 

[gregcaulder]

Does "I don't use it because the UI sucks and I cannot run it portable anymore" count? It's a story, alright... 

 

I agree, installed it on one system, and will not update it on any of my other systems.

[wimbit]

Agree. The Android update ruined it and the windows update UI is buggy. Also, I get lots of peers showing with the same name. This was not tested as much as it should have been. Everything was running very smoothly for quite some time until the latest version. My Android devices, I just removed it because it was not working properly. Sucks to say, but you had a good product before the new version and you made too many changes at once with the new release. Go, get a fresh coffee for the head developer and tell him/her to get it all working again. Thanks!!

 

OH, and here is what you don't realize ... 

 

I don't mind paying even for BTSYNC!!! It is that useful and I would gladly pay a small fee each year or make a donation. I have no idea how you plan to monetize this, but you can if you ask people, and then make it a better product with the funds. 

 

Maybe you guys should think of making a public BitCoin account for receiving donations.

 

 

But don't release shoddy versions and then ruin a fanbase that was getting quite pleased with the way things were working.

 

My 2cents

 

'cause I'll gladly send you $10 if you promise to test better next time

[APC]

+1 on everything wim said

[N4TE_B]

We read you guys loud and clear.

 

First off, let me clarify what it is we are looking for in this thread. Throughout the development of Sync, we've been keenly interested in how people are integrating the application in their daily personal and professional lives. You may recall that these were classically referred to as ‘Sync Hacks’.  As we move further into the realm of 1.4, we are looking for more individuals willing to detail what it is they are doing with Sync. Ultimately, we want to broadcast these Stories through our Blog.

 

We completely understand the opportunity this gives individuals to vent their frustrations with Sync 1.4 Beta. I want to explicitly state that the feedback is not falling on deaf ears. Every bit of it gets pushed up, quantified, prioritized and tackled by the appropriate team; be it the Sync engine itself, or the new UI. Stay tuned as builds are released, for I'm confident you will see pain points addressed and eliminated over the next few months.

 

To address those that are communicating serious frustration with the product, understand that we knew there'd be some individuals, certainly those we consider advanced users, that would see the UI overhaul as a step in the wrong direction. On the other hand, we also knew that the previous incarnations of Sync were difficult to use for a large community of individual users. This was one of the central guiding principles we have used to evolve Sync.

 

We are also working on functionality that's been requested by more advanced users and to address IT use cases. When we can deliver functional software addressing these uses, we will open another Alpha testing period.

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

[wimbit]

To address those that are communicating serious frustration with the product, understand that we knew there'd be some individuals, certainly those we consider advanced users, that would see the UI overhaul as a step in the wrong direction. 

 

 

The UI is fine, but buggy. But what is bad is, the sync itself broke.

 

The Android update broke the sync. And the PC update, it also is buggy, shows lots of peers that do not exist, syncing never ends, etc.

 

This is not a UI issue, the sync itself was not thoroughly tested before release. The sync itself broke and that is what is frustrating.

 

As I posted elsewhere, people actually like sync, and would even support it as a paid product. But not if you keep breaking it. This is not the first time that an update has broken the sync itself and then it needed major user intervention to get things working again. But it was stable for quite some time.

 

As they say in software circles, release often and test test test. But you made a lot of changes and then, with One-Big-Update , made it difficult for you (and us) to know what is working and what is now broke.

[N4TE_B]

We've seen quite a variety of issues pertaining to the UI as well as the engine. Each are addressed by the respective team as they come up and are escalated. 

 

Thanks for letting us know, and if you haven't, be sure to email the Sync Support Team and detail what it is that you are experiencing.  They may have some additional questions for you as well.

[eazq]

@N4TE_B

 

Product is Bittorrent's, therefore you can ruin it the way you like more.

 

You state: "To address those that are communicating serious frustration with the product, understand that we knew there'd be some individuals, certainly those we consider advanced users, that would see the UI overhaul as a step in the wrong direction. On the other hand, we also knew that the previous incarnations of Sync were difficult to use for a large community of individual users. This was one of the central guiding principles we have used to evolve Sync."

 

"serious frustration": A+ for the euphemism - instead, people say the opposite: I found myself and can confirm that the less I use btsync 1.4 the less I am frustrated.

 

As I said during the 1.4 alpha phase, a product's UI is not like a ring to rule us all. The consultant that suggested that should be fired. I am afraid she or he never read even the ten basic usability euristics by J. Nielsen. Nice minimalistic design for a sign on a motorway, but an almost unusable desktop GUI.

 

If you try to find at least a good line in this post to save it and write it down on your notepad, here it is: completely drop the desktop GUI. At least for those two operating systems that have an established, decade-long desktop experience sold to their users.

 

That said, share-by-link and share replication authorization are excellent enhancements.

[jaapp]

I use btsync mainly for sharing files and for backup.

 

For my phone it has rid me of using an USB cable for data transferring. I have synced my entire SDCard to a network share on a NAS. If I want to change some MP3's or video's on my phone, I just alter the network share and my NAS will then sync those changes to my phone. I always have my phones photos in reach. If I need to alter some config files of a random Android app, I use a text editor on a laptop. It's perfect. I love it.

[OldSync]

I use sync as multi-device backup. Using 6TB Raspberry Pi as a server and many machines and handhelds for backup. This upgrade broke the hand held devices. IOS devices won't run the app. 

 

With the leakage of all those compromising photographs from iCloud on to the Internet last week, you could have positioned yourselves as the solution to everyone's distrust of the cloud. You can't do that with broken apps and a user community that cant figure out how to get the software to work even-though they may have been using it for a year. 

 

You need to provide migration documentation that allows people to maintain their current stores of information without having to wipe out everything and start over. Something with this radical a difference in UI and functionality and the resulting limitations, should not be a dot release, it should be a full release and proper change controls for the users deployed.

 

Tying this to IE is going to create concern about the overall security of the software. Choosing one of the most notoriously buggy pieces of software for anything, is an architectural mistake.

 

 

 

OldSync

[cubik]

We use it to transfer about 1TB/week of ongoing content updates.  Files range in size; a few KB to several GB each.  It has been a flawless process so far.  

 

We used to use FTP, then SureSync (which is pricey and cumbersome) and then driving home in SF noticed a big billboard and discovered Sync.  A quick demo later and the team was sold.

 

We now get about 70mbps (out of 100 available) of throughput which is much more than FTP and SureSync could handle.

 

Once data hits a target Sync folder, a scheduled task involving RoboCopy handles the rest (to keep a certain amount of separation between our master library folder and 3rd party software)

 

Highly recommended.

[ChrisH]

I know I started this, but I think they would like you to post your "success" stories in the story thread they explicitly linked to.

[GreatMarko]

I know I started this, but I think they would like you to post your "success" stories in the story thread they explicitly linked to.

 

Chris, the topic that Kevin links to in his first post - and indeed that forum - are no longer available.

 

Comments/feedback on a specific build of 1.4, can be made in the relevant and pinned "Latest Desktop Build 1.4.xx" thread.

 

Comments/feedback relating to 1.4 in general, can either be added to this thread, or ca be contributed to other relevant existing discussions in the Sync General Discussion , Sync Troubleshooting, or Sync Feature Request forums accordingly.

[ChrisH]

Chris, the topic that Kevin links to in his first post - and indeed that forum - are no longer available.

 

Oops

An "official" notice for that would have been nice.

[GreatMarko]

Oops

An "official" notice for that would have been nice.

 

An official response was given by N4TE_B above.

[ChrisH]

An official response was given by N4TE_B above.

 

I know (and I appreciate it), but I meant a notice about the Stories thread being removed.

[jeby]

My daily use:

 

- iPhone camera roll to RasPi with DLNA -> instant review on the TV 

- Comics from server to Nexus 7: nothing's faster than Sync

 

I only use Sync when connected on WiFi.

[N4TE_B]

I know (and I appreciate it), but I meant a notice about the Stories thread being removed.

 

So a bit of a shell game with those topics.  I originally deprecated the Sync Stories (originally Sync Hacks), as we wanted to focus on how people use 1.4, rather than 1.3.x.  Because there was still-relevant information in that original topic, I brought it back up this morning.

 

Sorry for the confusion, and thanks to those that have begun contributing on this thread!

[foo-baz]

We read you guys loud and clear.

 

Thanks for adressing the issue regarding Share-Keys in the latest Android-Release. As this fixes at least my problems, I'd like to share what I am doing with sync:

 

- Pictures

First off my wife and I used to use Dropbox quite heavily to backup or own files and also get access to each others pictures from mobile phones. Sync enables both of us to sync the pictures to a small box located at home, making the pictures available to each other.

 

- Backup

Sync allows me to have a data redundancy on multiple locations. My wife's and my data is being synced to my small-ish server box at home (Linux x86_64), a computer located at my parents (headless notebook, Linux x86_64) and also to one located at my brother's home (raspberry pi, Linux Arm). The great thing is, btsync is available not only for mainstream architectures but also for Linux/arm which is an absolute pro, as an raspberry with external HDD is very power efficient.

These systems also backup my parent's and my brother's data. No cloud, no privacy concers.

 

- Datatransfer

I am located in a town where currently only 2,3Mbit is provided (being upgraded to 50Mbit till December). With sync I can start downloads via ssh at my parents and have sync it transfer the resulting files without problems to my home. Doing large downloads at home via http/browser sometimes leads to corrupt downloads and also requires an additional computer to be powered on.

 

- Versions

Not directly via btsync but via btrfs on Linux. Doing hourly/daily/weekly/monthly/yearly snaphots on all connected devices gives me a high level of security and confidence in my data (of cource, mostly kids pictures) being available.

 

Sorry, but not using the persona/getsync-links at all, currently.

Edited September 9, 2014 by foo-baz

[zwiebelbart]

We use BtSync to keep our project folders (some of which contain up to 100.000 files) in our small team in sync, so it's kind of a distributed file-server/backup use-case.
Our setup consists of about 10 machines (Windows, OSX, Linux) across two studios in two countries with one linux-based server always running plus various mobile clients (IOS, Android, Windows Phone). We're big fans of selfhosting/own your software and big skeptics about cloudsourcing of sensitive data, so we appreciate the btsync-solution.

Upgrading from 1.3 to 1.4 was quite of a no-brainer for us, though the customization of the (otherwise blessed) StreamsList took some time.

We understand that a beta-phase incorporates changes, so the rewrite of the UI is ok for us, though for our team the new UI doesn't bring any benefit over the old one (except from eye-candy). The simplification of the UI might be a benefit if we want to invite clients or externals to share some folders at a later time (we'll wait for the UI-bugs to be resolved before we try)
We consider the mandatory requirement of IE>8 on windows-machines a minor problem (reasonable admins should have upgraded their windows-machines to more recent versions of IE long time ago anyway), though we would have preferred an independent solution like webkit for the webview-component.

Our whish-/buglist for future releases so far:
- resizable colums (UI-bug)
- sortable colums (UI-feature)
- a not truncated history-log (bug(?) log shows only 20 last entries since 1.4)
- customizable/filterable history-log (nice-to-have teamwork-related feature)
- conflict-management for files (nice-to-have teamwork-related feature)
- better file-versioning (so-nice-to-have-feature)

keep up the good work!

Edited September 9, 2014 by zwiebelbart

[rstarkov]

Use case: deliver large backup images from servers (created there on a schedule) to several remote locations. To secure against deletions, we rely on the Archive folder, although it might be handy if BTSync could just have an option not to propagate deletions. Each remote location also runs a script which does a periodic clean-up of older backups, so syncing deletions is not necessary in this scenario.

 

Another workaround that is necessary here is NSSM, because BTSync can't run as a service and these are all Windows servers.

 

Separately from that, I use BTSync at home to sync movies between by desktop and laptop, and to sync a huge number of personal photos and videos among my family members. It became great for this use case with the introduction of read-only syncs.

[Chris14543]

I use it to mirror / backup daily file changes to an android set top box. It's really useful since I work on more then one machine. I'd use it more if the android client had some options that kept it limited to my LAN.

Edited September 23, 2014 by Chris14543

[NeilScudder]

We are using Bittorrent sync as part of the Playnode system for DJs to provide background music in businesses. This project is in beta, about to launch on Kickstarter. The audio hardware is a raspberry pi. 

 

Video demonstration:

More details: https://control.neilscudder.com/about

 

We hope to develop desktop applications to streamline the process using the API if the Kickstarter campaign is successful.

 

I am very optimistic about the Bittorrent sync technology, and although I relate to many of the complaints in this thread, things have been getting better fast with the new releases. Keep up the great work.

[sdafgsdfg]

I use it to get eBooks and pdf magazines from my desktop onto iPads.

 

There are several iPads in the house and also I have friends and relations who will visting and say "hey can I borrow that book?" etc. So I just give them a Sync link to my ebooks folder and they can copy whatever they want.

 

It's much better than fooling around with iTunes.