Joel's Feedback and Suggestions

[pols1337]

Hi, I got SyncApp installed and running on two PCs this morning. My setup is pretty simple: a desktop computer running Windows 7 x64 and a laptop computer running Windows 7 x32.

I have a couple of very simple basic suggestions that I think would help a lot:

1) Devices -- Show not only the connected devices but also the host device. In other words, show all of them. Maybe even show a green / red status if the devices are online or not online.

2) Shared Folders -- Personally I would rename the tab to "Sync Folders" since that's the primary buzzword and language (eg. the service is called "SyncApp," yeah?). More importantly, there should be a simple message that appears when a person tries to enter in only a secret, but not the folder to sync. I encountered this problem because, stupidly, I thought I only needed to enter my secret. The error message I got was very vague and just said I couldn't connect or something.

3) Shared Folders -- Any way to make indexing go faster, or set high priority / normal priority / low priority? It's currently scanning at about 15 files per second, which feels so slow.

4) Transfers -- Go faster. Rawr.

5) Transfers -- offer option to Pause / Resume syncing or maybe even a Scheduler.

In any case, I'm pretty pleased with the product as it is. I just wish it would upload / download much faster, especially since my normal transfer rates is hundreds of kB/s more.

Good job on SyncApp, and best of luck on future development!

Joel

[GreatMarko]

1) Devices -- Show not only the connected devices but also the host device. In other words, show all of them. Maybe even show a green / red status if the devices are online or not online.

I agree, offline devices should also be shown in the device list with an indication that they are "offline", and the time they were last seen (and sync'd)... there's isn't a central "host" device... do you just mean a way to indicate which device you're currently on?

2) Shared Folders -- Personally I would rename the tab to "Sync Folders" since that's the primary buzzword and language (eg. the service is called "SyncApp," yeah?). More importantly, there should be a simple message that appears when a person tries to enter in only a secret, but not the folder to sync. I encountered this problem because, stupidly, I thought I only needed to enter my secret. The error message I got was very vague and just said I couldn't connect or something.

Yes, "Sync Folders" would be less ambiguous than "Shared Folder", which to novice users could imply that their data is being "shared" publicly, rather than privately sync'd.

As for the "Cannot open destimation folder" error that's shown when you enter a Secret but no folder, this would be more user-friendly if it showed "Please select a folder to sync", or similar.

3) Shared Folders -- Any way to make indexing go faster, or set high priority / normal priority / low priority? It's currently scanning at about 15 files per second, which feels so slow.

They're already working on "Improving synchronization speed for LAN" see:

5) Transfers -- offer option to Pause / Resume syncing or maybe even a Scheduler.

You can already pause/resume sync via the tray menu! The "scheduler" idea has been suggested by numerous people now - I'm sure it's on BitTorrent's radar!

[pols1337]

@GreatMarko Thanks for all of your valuable feedback!

1) Yes, I meant to say the device you're currently on. (By "host" I meant your current host device, but I can understand the confusion in terminology).

2) Yup, a simple and friendly message would be very helpful in directing users, especially since SyncApp is such a simplistic (but beautiful!) program.

3) Can't wait for higher speeds! I went to lunch and when I came back, my speeds improved from 15 kB/s to 50 kB/s, but it's still waaaay less than the 280 kB/s I usually get with uTorrent.

5) Thanks for the tip! I never knew that before. You know, it would be really helpful if someone could compile a list of "tips and tricks" for new users.

Also, I read later through some of the forum posts, and yes it definitely seems like many people want the scheduler. Hopefully they will implement it soon!

[kos13]

There is a difference between BitTorrent and SyncApp. BitTorrent uses a lot of connections, and usually fully occupy the channel, completely preempt other network traffic. SyncApp behaves more politely to your network, so your other software could operate correctly.

If BitTorrent could get only 280 Kb/s out of your network, you have a slow network. And if it is shared between several users, SyncApp will not get close to this speed. We plan to add sonfiguration to SyncApp, so you could increase amount of connections manually, so it might help you.

[pols1337]

@kos13 I don't know if it makes a difference, but I was referring to 280 kB/s upload speed at that particular moment when I was torrenting (which is much, much less than 700 or 800 kB/s upload speed I can normally get)

In any case, it would be great if you could let users 'boost' their traffic or connection. I totally /support that idea!

[pols1337]

To add to my wishlist:

6) Prioritization -- I know many other users have suggested this, but I wish I could set transfer priority of what folders should be sync'd first.

[pols1337]

Hi, I've been running SyncApp continuously for the past couple of days to try to get my laptop and desktop PC synchronized. One of the things I noticed is that SyncApp uses up a ton of CPU. See attached picture.

Is this because I'm trying to share 16 folders (with sixteen parallel indexings), or does SyncApp just take up this much processing power in general?

Also, does this program auto-update or are releases manual right now?

[GreatMarko]

One of the things I noticed is that SyncApp uses up a ton of CPU. See attached picture.

Is this because I'm trying to share 16 folders (with sixteen parallel indexings), or does SyncApp just take up this much processing power in general?

From what I can determine - the amount of memory used by SyncApp seems directly related to the number (or perhaps the total size?) of files being monitored.

For example, on one of my machines, SyncApp is currently only using 9,484 K, where as on second machine it's using 178,168 K !

The first machine is syncing approx 1.6G of data over 1,223 files

The second machine is syncing a total of 75.2G of data over 169,365 files

Whilst over 178M of memory usage does seem rather high - on the plus side, at least it remains faily stable (i.e. I can have the machine on and running SyncApp for days on end, and the memory usage of SyncApp stays pretty much the same, and doesn't slowly increase over time!)

In addition, I know the SyncApp team have acknowledged that are currently issues when trying to sync more than 100,000 files, so it may be that the high memory usage is also related in some way to that.

A good point about the auto-update though! - Whilst there is a "Check Now" button in SyncApp 1.0.75, when I click it, it doesn't seem to do anything and gives me no indication that there is/isn't an update available - so it may be that this hasn't been implemented yet? (I have previously reported this non-action when the "Check Now" button is clicked as a bug)

[GreatMarko]

...another couple of auto-update queries that occur to me having thought about it some more - (and assuming that even if the auto-update feature isn't currently working, it will be implemented at some stage)

Firstly, if you've got the "Check for updates automatically" option selected, how often will SyncApp check for updates?

Will it be on a recurring interval in the background whilst SyncApp is running (i.e. every X days)? ...or will it only auto-check for updates upon launch of the application? (and therefore if you leave SyncApp running for days, it won't check for updates until you restart the app!?)

Secondly, if you do have "Check for updates automatically" selected - will this just alert you to the fact that there is an update available, or will it/can it actually download, install, and restart SyncApp for you? - this second option would be preferable if you have SyncApp running unattended/on remote machines i.e. SyncApp could keep itself updated without any user intervention? (also useful if all your devices must run the same version of SyncApp in order to sync properly?)

Anyway, I'm sure Kos, or one of the other SyncApp team here could explain a little more how the update system for SyncApp is envisaged to work?

[pols1337]

Great questions Marko