Are You Still Using Btsync 1.3.xx?

[Journeyman]

I'd like to take a little survey here of everyone using BTSync (not the mobile versions).  I'd like to get an idea of who is using 1.3 or 1.4.  Do you feel that 1.3 or 1.4 has more better features? Do you feel that 1.3 or 1.4 has more bugs? 

 

Personally, I'm still on 1.3. I upgraded to 1.4 when it first came out, and was seriously disspointed.  It wasn't as stable as 1.3. (Please, I'm not trying to disrespect the dev's on this, I know they're trying.)  Some files got messed up, the interface was cumbersome, and I didn't think it offered any features that were worth the trade off.  I'm reluctant to try these later editions of 1.4 since it was a lot of work getting 1.3 to function again after having 1.4 on there - re-adding all those keys, etc.

 

What are your thoughts on this?  Have you noticed better stability with 1.4?  Have the bugs been getting better or worse?  Or are you like me and just settling for 1.3 for a while?

[bb10]

Yes, still on 1.3.109. The UI in 1.4 is horrible.

[DeleteMyForumMembership]

6 computers on 1.3.109. 2 others needed proxy support and after failed testing with 1.4.x I abandoned BT and moved them to ownCloud. Mostly because of issues with port reset, peers not seen and not starting in tray. Only 2 computers are on 1.4.x for testing purposes. BT bugs are getting worse (proprietary) while ownCloud (open source) is getting better.

[richdotward]

1.3.94 my main 24/7 sync on Ubuntu. Any higher and the webgui is blank.

My other one has a old 1.4 on it. I intend to go back to 1.3 on this also as it takes ages to load the webgui and I have to press refresh a few times.

Rich

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

[supercilious]

Yes. Sticking with 1.3.109 on all my machines. Unless 1.4.x ditches the horrible interface, I will most likely move to Syncthing.

[ChrisH]

Yes, still on 1.3 (~ 10 machines). Evaluating SyncThing at the moment.

 

Can't you do a real poll with numbers in this forum? I think in this way you'll only get responses from the people who don't like 1.4...

[0xDEADC0DE]

Still on 1.3. But only because 1.4 is not portable like 1.3 was.

The UI in 1.4 is horrible.

I will give SyncThing another try.

[koldKat]

I'm also still on 1.3, for similar reasons as stated above. Actually, the UI of 1.4 while meant to be easier to use, completely confuses my less-tech-savvy friends. I've discouraged them from upgrading. That, and the the fact that I also dislike it. 1.3 is lean, mean, and lightweight.

 

Way is see it, something similar to the uTorrent story will happen with Sync. Eventually.

 

Speaking of which (and somewhat offtopic), this is on the uTorrent front page:

 

Light. Limitless.

Elegant, efficient torrent downloading.

 

And imagine this:

 

Light. Limitless.

Elegant, efficient syncing.

 

But what happens instead? Go figure.

 

(Sorry, I don't mean to be a troll)

[GreatMarko]

Allow me to jump in here just to highlight what BitTorrent's Senior Customer Support & Outreach Manager said last month in relation to people's concerns with 1.4, for those who missed it:
 

We read you guys loud and clear.
...
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!

[coewar]

What are you guys doing? Taking lessons from Google with the UI?  I'm not using a damn touch pad!!!

 

Gotta now find the latest 1.3.x to download.. seems like website isn't making it easy to use older version.

bug fixes, great.. but what in the world are the THUMB-SIZED buttons and rows for? and the stupid symbols instead of easily understandable text labels on buttons?

And the fancy drawing, etc etc..

First off, how "easy" does it have to be anyway? Only someone kind of tech savvy will even want to use BTSync.  But none-the-less..  it can still be easy and not stupid big.. as if some genius out there figured out that in order to be easy, it means HUGE FREAKING BUTTONS and everything.

 

At minimum, allow an "Advanced" or "Normal" theme.

 

Google UI on Mail and things like that just turned totally stupid some years ago when they ditched EASILY UNDERSTANDABLE buttons like "ARCHIVE" and "DELETE" with some crazy icons..  more recently replacing EASY and UNIVERSAL symbol for "cancel/close" which is the "X"  and now it's some kind of stupid stair case or something? Some college intern calling the shots?

 

ok.. I'm done.. just had to barf up a little.  Obviously overall, great system..  but it's just so sad when some UI team gets their hands on things to ..  make a statement or something?  The whole Windows 8 - like fad with crap colors and no borders and no curves with huge buttons just makes me want to walk away.

[sciurius]

I upgraded my 1.3.x systems to 1.4.x and soon found out that, while 1.3.x never had let me down, 1.4.x proved to be unreliable. Peers got lost, synchs got stuck. Since I used btsync a.o. for backup purposes I did not have another option than downgrading, the hard way, to 1.3.x on my most critical systems.

Currently the 1.3.x systems are whistling nicely. I have one system that it still running 1.4.x and I use it mostly for testing and submitting bug reports.

Unlike many other users I do not have mental problems with the UI. It's the bugs in the functionality that bug me.

1.4.x was meant to be the big official non-beta btsync, or Sync as it is called now, release. But unfortunately it didn't work out that way. After a short while it was demoted to beta again. Personally, I do not understand a release strategy that only releases beta versions. But that has been discussed already.

Once 1.4.x will be as stable as the old 1.3.x I'll probably be more than happy to try again.

[GreatMarko]

1.4.x was meant to be the big official non-beta btsync, or Sync as it is called now, release. But unfortunately it didn't work out that way. After a short while it was demoted to beta again.

Just to clarify, all generally available public releases of Sync to date have been Betas. This includes 1.0.x, 1.1.x, 1.2.x, 1.3.x and 1.4.x builds.

It's been recently made much clearer to users that Sync remains in beta for anyone not sure - but just to clarify: Sync 1.4 has not been "demoted to beta" - it's always been Beta!!

[Journeyman]

Yes, still on 1.3 (~ 10 machines). Evaluating SyncThing at the moment.

 

Can't you do a real poll with numbers in this forum? I think in this way you'll only get responses from the people who don't like 1.4...

 

I'm not sure about being able to do a poll.  I was just seeing that some of the usuals weren't posting as often (ever?) to the Latest Sync Release 1.4.xx threads and I wondered what happened to those guys.  Figured they must be, like myself, using 1.3 and have nothing to contribute to the 1.4 threads.  Figured it doesn't do the devs any good to have the seasoned users not be using 1.4 - even after this 1.4.91 edition, and figured I'd take a little survey find out why.

 

 

Allow me to jump in here just to highlight what BitTorrent's Senior Customer Support & Outreach Manager said last month in relation to people's concerns with 1.4, for those who missed it:

 

It just seems that we've taken a step back here.  But here, in the near future, things are going to be ironed out to be reliable like 1.3 was.  Why take the step back only to take a step forward?  Why not have polished 1.3, instead of breaking it, and then spending a couple of months fixing it?  Was deciding to have a new UI for ease of development the answer to these questions?  If that's the case, I totally get that.  But it seems a lot of people just can't come to the point of upgrading until it's as reliable as it once was.

[GreatMarko]

Was deciding to have a new UI for ease of development the answer to these questions?  If that's the case, I totally get that.

Yes, that's exactly right! Because Sync is supported on a wide variety of OS's the aim is to try and bring convergence and consistency to the UI across all (desktop) platforms.

Having a front-end that's built around HTML/CSS/Javascript makes the UI itself highly portable across platforms

I know right now the UI's sluggish and somewhat bloated - but optimizations will undoubtedly come as the new UI matures and the code is streamlined.

[ChrisH]

Having a front-end that's built around HTML/CSS/Javascript makes the UI itself highly portable across platforms

 

Sorry, but being a web developer myself I can tell you for a fact that nothing that uses Internet Explorer 9 as a basis can ever be highly portable. Not even to other IE versions.

I repeat myself, but I would have gone all the way and used a real web interface. If opening a browser is too much for the average BTSync user then surely a client app with an embedded BrowserView would have been feasible.

[GreatMarko]

I repeat myself, but I would have gone all the way and used a real web interface.

Which is what's going to happen with Sync (and in fact already does for Windows XP/2k3, Linux, NAS users, etc) - the "dependance" on IE9+ won't persist (see this post), and you'll be able to access the Web UI in your favorite browser instead.

[Ligence]

What are you guys doing? Taking lessons from Google with the UI?  I'm not using a damn touch pad!!!

 

Gotta now find the latest 1.3.x to download.. seems like website isn't making it easy to use older version.

bug fixes, great.. but what in the world are the THUMB-SIZED buttons and rows for? and the stupid symbols instead of easily understandable text labels on buttons?

And the fancy drawing, etc etc..

First off, how "easy" does it have to be anyway? Only someone kind of tech savvy will even want to use BTSync.  But none-the-less..  it can still be easy and not stupid big.. as if some genius out there figured out that in order to be easy, it means HUGE FREAKING BUTTONS and everything.

 

At minimum, allow an "Advanced" or "Normal" theme.

 

Google UI on Mail and things like that just turned totally stupid some years ago when they ditched EASILY UNDERSTANDABLE buttons like "ARCHIVE" and "DELETE" with some crazy icons..  more recently replacing EASY and UNIVERSAL symbol for "cancel/close" which is the "X"  and now it's some kind of stupid stair case or something? Some college intern calling the shots?

 

ok.. I'm done.. just had to barf up a little.  Obviously overall, great system..  but it's just so sad when some UI team gets their hands on things to ..  make a statement or something?  The whole Windows 8 - like fad with crap colors and no borders and no curves with huge buttons just makes me want to walk away.

 

Hear, hear. Ever since Google took a crap on Gmail UI, I've been using userstyles to add labels to the buttons as well as different colours (yes, delete is red). One could do such customization with the web interface of Sync, I suppose...

 

I have been very happy with BitTorrent Sync, right up to the moment I updated to 1.4.91 some time ago. Now I am just about to roll back to 1.3.109, as I can't live with the user interface change. A lot of the "improvements" do not feel like improvements to me.

 

Exhibit A: A single "Add folder" button, one dialog box that allows you to either enter a key or generate one, and choose the folder.

 

Exhibit B: Two separate ways of adding a folder. WHY?

 

 

To me, 1.3 felt professional and tool-like, while 1.4 with the fades and mouseovers and the lot is everything but.

[louis925]

I think the UI of v1.3.x makes more sense. Also, it is much faster than v1.4.

[coewar]

I think the argument of simplifying the dev process is not the best excuse. It's the same goal that folks like Microsoft have when creating Windows 8. It just does not work for a good product. Each device has its ways of having a UI. Still, a web UI can be made to run clean and fast without all the extra flashy fade-outs and multiple access points to the same thing, etc.

[ilhares]

I'm probably in the minority knowing my luck, but I would find a way to cough up some real money to return to something resembling the old UI.  This new thing is gigantic and I cannot shrink it enough (short of total minimizing) to remain desktop friendly.  I don't need big flashy icons or animated activities.  I don't need 1-click sharing.  Just a useful, quiet, peaceful 'runs in the background and does it right' app, which BT Sync has most definitely been.

 

But now?  It's huge. No me gusta, baby.

[shizentai]

The new UI is stupid and laggy. This is not Dropbox, this is a specialized tool for people who know what they're doing.

The program now crashes every time I switch Windows themes, which I do often due to eye problems.
 

And did it always take that much memory?

[duch]

I upgraded my 1.3.x systems to 1.4.x and soon found out that, while 1.3.x never had let me down, 1.4.x proved to be unreliable. Peers got lost, synchs got stuck. Since I used btsync a.o. for backup purposes I did not have another option than downgrading, the hard way, to 1.3.x on my most critical systems.

Currently the 1.3.x systems are whistling nicely. I have one system that it still running 1.4.x and I use it mostly for testing and submitting bug reports.

Unlike many other users I do not have mental problems with the UI. It's the bugs in the functionality that bug me.

 

[...]

Once 1.4.x will be as stable as the old 1.3.x I'll probably be more than happy to try again.

 

The same here, I've got no issues with the UI, but the core functionality seems way too much full of bug and unreliable in 1.4.x, so I'm still on 1.3.109 everywhere.

 

Regarding UI, I'd actually like the idea of having a real web UI accessible through a browser (like the linux version) on every platform.

[heypete]

Yes. Sticking with 1.3.109 on all my machines. Unless 1.4.x ditches the horrible interface, I will most likely move to Syncthing.

 

Agreed. 1.3.109 (like others in the 1.3.x series) were small, lightweight, and portable. It was simple and straightforward to use, worked well, gave me the information I wanted (for example, the Devices and Transfers tabs that would give a "global" overview of the sync status for all my folders), and generally did what it said on the tin. The standard Windows UI was compact and usable. Essentially, 1.3.109 was the Platonic ideal of a well-designed Windows program that embraces the Unix philosophy of "do one thing and do it well".

 

1.4.x adds a lot of complexity, external dependencies, and UI fluff. It hides useful information (no global overview), and generally is a step backwards in terms of usability. I'm not a fan of web UIs in general (exception: headless systems).

 

Syncthing has a ways to go until it's as simple and straightforward as BT Sync 1.3.109, but it's definitely on my radar.

[2jFXHjJF]

[cutted]

 

Please avoid non-constructive criticism on forums. You are welcome to share what exactly is not satisfying you.

Edited October 17, 2014 by RomanZ
Non-constructive criticism

[duch]

Unconstructive criticism sux even harder.