Create Synchronicity

Create Synchronicity
Developer(s) Create Software (Clément Pit--Claudel)
Stable release 5.2.1 May 3, 2011; 10 months ago (2011-05-03)
Operating system Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Seven
Type Utility
License GPL v3.0
Website http://synchronicity.sourceforge.net

Create Synchronicity is a portable, multilingual[1] file synchronization and backup tool developed in VB.Net, and released under the GNU General Public License, version 3.0.

Contents

Development

Create Synchronicity was created with the aim of delivering a lightweight[2] backup application for Windows systems. Its development started in June 2009[3], and has been active since then[4]. An experimental port to Linux was published in February 2011[5].

Features

Create Synchronicity has a graphical user interface, and supports command-line use.

The following features are available:

Create Synchronicity can be downloaded as a zip file or as an installer for Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. It is hosted by Sourceforge, and ranked #32 on December 23, 2010.[7]

Performance

Create Synchronicity uses its own comparison algorithm to speed up the preview step, which reduces disk accesses[8], and has been said to be "Easy to use, lightweight and fast."[9].

However, since it uses the .Net Framework, Create Synchronicity may be slower to launch than native applications[10][11] (written for example in C/C++), but similar to applications written in Java[12]. Provided that disk accesses are the slowest part of the scan and backup process, the impact of choosing VB.Net on performance should be minimal.

Being written in VB.Net, Create Synchronicity does take advantage of the file caching functions of the underlying operating system[13], which can speed the preview step[14]. However, this performance gain doesn't exist if synchronizing two external hard drives, and/or if the caching process has not run yet.

Create Synchronicity has been translated to English, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish,Swedish, Dutch, Czech, Indonesian, Hebrew, Danish, Russian, Estonian, Polish, Bulgarian, Korean, Chinese (Simplified), Hungarian, Chinese (Traditional), and Amharic.

See also

References

  1. ^ Currently available in English, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Dutch, Czech, Indonesian, Hebrew, Danish, Russian, Estonian, Polish, Bulgarian, Korean, Chinese (Simplified), Hungarian, Chinese (Traditional), and Amharic ; see the official website
  2. ^ Quick review on Carol's Vault - The binary, once zipped, weights approximately 180kB as of February 16, 2011.
  3. ^ Release Notes on Create Synchronicity SVN server
  4. ^ Code analysis on Ohloh
  5. ^ Create Synchronicity latest builds. The port relies on Mono, an open source implementation of the Common Language Runtime.
  6. ^ Demo video on DownloadTube
  7. ^ Project ranking on Sourceforge
  8. ^ Syncing code on Create Synchronicity SVN server
  9. ^ An article by Johnny Karp, editor of the Freeware Mission website, about Create Synchronicity
  10. ^ Application Startup Time entry on MSDN
  11. ^ Improving startup time on MSDN's CLR Inside Out
  12. ^ A full Java/VB.Net comparison
  13. ^ File Caching explained on MSDN
  14. ^ The editor of Software Critics wrote about Create Synchronicity that "Aside from being highly customizable, it’s light-weight having 80kB file size when zipped and 170kB when extracted saving so much disk space to spare. Behind its tiny size, the application is big in performance."

External links