“File” Syncing?

Lots of new companies are coming out with file syncing products. This irks me, so here’s my rant.

Personally I’ve used Foldershare since day one (which has been out for a while, even pre-microsoft), and its been rock solid. I sync “working files” between a couple of bizdev guys and a desktop thats on all the time. This keeps the team on the same page with power points presentations, word docs, etc.

For those of you raving about DropBox, Foldershare does/did that. What makes the whole concept even less interesting is that after doing this Foldershare syncing successfully for several years I realized I don’t really have that many files to sync anymore.

Where have all the files gone (apparently into laptop bags, because in a recent search for a new business/laptop bag I found a ton that have file sorting sections, like paper files?, who uses that, lawyers?)?

Gmail takes care of mail, Flickr/Smugmug kind of take care of pictures, Gdocs takes care of word, excel, and maybe ppt. Powerpoint is the only one where google docs falls behind for my needs, but either google will fix that or some other service will fill in the gap. What else is there?

Stacy at gigom agrees on the offline file side of things when she said, “Frankly, because I don’t collaborate with anyone using offline files like Word or Excel, and work from the same laptop all the time, I’m not sure how useful I find Dropbox.”

That leaves music, pictures, and video files. Since I’m using iTunes, and the iTunes library doesn’t update based on that actual files placed in the itunes folders, these syncing services don’t do me much good for music.

For photos and video, I’ve found that I don’t want sync. My laptop doesn’t really need full copy’s of my entire video and picture collections (which are getting massive in size). I just need to be able to get new videos and pictures from my laptop into my master collection at home, and every once and a while I need access from my laptop to those media files on my desktop.

So file syncing isn’t what I need at all. Maybe there are some use cases out there where it’s needed (collaborative photo editing, or music editing), but my daily personal and business needs don’t call for it, and what few needs I had seem to be rapidly dwinding.

For those of you who think I come off sour on Dropbox, no offense intended (I like the UI, and the versioning stuff is cool). I’m just sick of everyone hyping a new product ever couple of minutes just because it has 2 or 3 features more than the last one. Lets see some real earth-shattering innovation. Thats what gets me excited.