Incredibly Useful Free Software of the Week

[filkertom]

Most file management programs -- xplorer^2, Directory Opus (yes, Amiga peeps, it's still out there), eighty gazillion programs, really -- have functions which you have to pay for the full version to get. Completely understandable; they want to reimburse their developers. But my file manip needs are reasonably small and simple.

Except for one particular feature: synchronization.

I've got something near sixty thousand audio loops for use with Acid Pro. Whole lotta storage going on. And I've got 'em in two places: an internal drive on the desktop machine, and an external I can plug into the laptop. Problem is, because of what I've been using where and such, some new downloads got saved to one, some to the other. Over several months, there was about a gig and a quarter of disparity between those two drives, and I really wasn't looking forward to going through it manually. And the file manager programs not only were no help, because they wanted me to upgrade to get synchronization, and because once you upgraded, comparison of the two folders was relatively easy, but the actual steps for synchronization were much more of a pain.

And so I Googled. Found a few command-line programs. Oh, yeah, I wanted to do this in DOS in the twenty-first century. Feh.

But I also found Allway Sync for Windows.

Simple, clear interface. I picked the two folders, clicked "Analyze". Took about three minutes. Let me know in the "Important Message" section seven files which had different versions on each drive, and wanted me to confirm which version I wanted. Let me know how many files were on both drives (it was comparing directory trees, not really deep analysis -- I know I've got some dup'd loops), and how many weren't, and which was going which way.

I clicked "Synchronize."

Took about twenty minutes.

Over fourteen thousand files, over a gig and a quarter of data, boom.

I don't need to sync much, but when I need it I need it done right. Allway Sync did it right, fast, and easy.

So, what's your newest freebie software you can't live without? (Be sure to mention the operating system.)

Comments

[ruisseau.livejournal.com]

Azureus for Windows (http://azureus.sourceforge.net/)

My Doctor Who addiction can only be fed with weekly help from Azureus.

[solarbird]

Azureus, being Java-based, runs on any computer with a Java engine. I've run it extensively on my OS X-based Macintosh Powerbook, and also recommend it.

(Mostly I'm commenting so it's known not to be Windows-only.)

[emiofbrie.livejournal.com]

Chalk up another loyal OS X Azureus user! :)

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Orbiter 2006 (http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html)

Great fun for the wannabe space jockey.

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

I've been dowloading stuff for it all night. This is gonna be fun.

[dhstein.livejournal.com]

neat!

[ixias.livejournal.com]

C-Cleaner tidies up your hard-drive. You can donate, but it's voluntary.

http://www.ccleaner.com/

[wookiee71.livejournal.com]

I'm trying out the Beta on Google Desktop for WinXP. So far, tis nifty and packed with capabilities. Hideable and collapsable and easily configurable. But the indexing it does of my compy is getting a little tiresome. It indexes *every startup!*

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

That's the big reason I haven't permanently installed any of the desktop serach engines. I probably should just deal -- God knows I've got enough other crap accessing my drive all the time. "No, really, we know that file was there a few minutes ago, but we just want to make sure --!"

3D rendering and editing

[jeffreycornish.livejournal.com]

Google SketchUp (http://sketchup.google.com) and Anim8or (http://www.anim8or.com)

I also just discovered Directory Opus too. Nifty stuff.

Oh, and a big second on Orbiter (http://www.orbiter.com). The latest version was just released last week, and it is beautiful!

Re: 3D rendering and editing

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I rec'd SketchUp here a couple of weeks ago, but I'm not using it now. It's great, but it slowed my computer down to a crawl (Athlon XP 2600+, 1 GB RAM). Fair warning.

[uplinktruck.livejournal.com]

Allway Sync looks great. I've been looking for something like that for a while now.

BTW: Starlight and Saxophone came to the top of the confidence audio playlist during the New Orleans mayoral elections. While it was playing I got a call from someone looking at the feed in Los Angeles. He was very impressed with the song asked who was singing and the title. I passed along that information and your website.

Been meaning to let you know about that for a while now.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Way cool! Thanks!

[scruffycritter.livejournal.com]

TOAD for MySql" by Quest Software.

I'm such a dork, but it is the one doing me good now and I found it last week. The Oracle version is what most people know. This one happens to be free.

[cleverthylacine]

Thank you so very much. I've been dreading the hours it was going to take me to go through my external hard drive and get all my backups for stories, RPG logs, and character spreadsheets/databases all matched up on the most current version.

I am now done with this task in about 20 minutes and 5 of that was the download.

It had never even occurred to me that there was software that would do it for me. :)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Glad to help. The only reason I thought about it was that all the file management software wanted you to pay to get that function, and I knew there had to be some tech geek out there who said, Enn Eff Dubya.