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Steve Dotto here. Today’s topic is SugarSync, another of the really good Cloud storage solutions.
Now you’re forgiven if your eyes start to spin a little bit when we start talking Cloud
storage because there are so many contenders out there from Apple’s iCloud to Microsoft
Solution to Google Drive to Dropbox and SugarSync. I’m going to bring another one to the table
here, talking to you about SugarSync. But I like SugarSync. I think it, along with
Dropbox, are two of the best solutions as far as Cloud storage goes and it offers a
very different philosophy on Cloud storage than Dropbox which is why I like it. It will
appeal to a different sector of people. Now where Dropbox is very simple and very, very
easy to understand how it works. You have a Dropbox folder, it’s synced to the internet,
and you can access that Dropbox folder from multiple computers, very simple and straightforward.
Anybody can use it. SugarSync requires just a little bit more
forethought because what happens with SugarSync is you don’t create a new SugarSync folder
that’s shared. Instead, you manage and share your existing folders, determine which ones
on your devices you want to share, and then enable sharing from that. It’s a subtle
but important difference in how it works because we have to manage the process a little bit
more but it also means also SugarSync can possibly fit better into your productivity
work style, especially if you’ve got a really good system of file management, stuff that
you already use whereas in Dropbox, if you have a file system, management system you
already use and you want to share those files, you have to move them into Dropbox which might
break your system. Let me show you. Let’s dive into it. SugarSync
is free to try. They give you a little bit more storage than most of the others. They
give you 5 gigabytes right out of the box and of course, you can add storage by getting
your friends to sign up. They’ll give you free storage and you can purchase it for about
$5 a month for probably more than enough storage than you’ll ever need.
But let’s take a look at your app itself. It installs just like Dropbox. See my little
Dropbox icon here. It installs in your toolbar here. Mine is actually doing a little bit
of a sync right now. That’s why I don’t see the little hummingbird icon but instead
I see the syncing icon. But you manage it from your SugarSync File Manager. You open
this up and what we have here is we have a window that manages what folders we choose
to sync and you see the different devices that I have or you see the different computers
that I have. I can just attach my mobility devices as well which I’ll show you in a
moment, and it works with everything. It works with Windows, Mac, it works with Android,
it works with iPhone, and it even works with Blackberry. So it works with all of the different
major operating systems. So what we see here is we see my office computer
identified right here and these are the folders that I choose to share from my computer. Now
I can add more folders to sync just by clicking the sync folder, ‘Add Sync Folders’ and
then it looks at the main folders in the computer if I want it. I actually have another drive
attach so if I want to access folders on that other drive to share, I click here and it
brings me deeper into my file management area. But for the most part, you are going to have
a series of folders, a document series, maybe some with images, business graphics, that
sort of thing, that you want to share between devices. Once you assign the sharing here,
it then chooses those folders and syncs them to the Cloud and then syncs them to your other
devices. It’s great if you want make sure you have the exact same folder on multiple
different computers. And then when you edit the file on it, you can edit the file and
that changes it everywhere at the same time. So it’s really nice for revision control
for individuals. Plus the other benefit that SugarSync brings
to the table is a little extra layer of security in that you can password protect. I don’t
think that SugarSync is as good a tool for file sharing. If you’re sharing large files,
I think Dropbox works a lot better but if you have a system where you’re working within
that system and you want to be able to work with that system and have certain folders
that you have access to all the time then SugarSync might be just the ticket.
As I said, this is the basic management area. There’s my notebook, there’s my desktop
computer, and we can see which folders I want to share that find their home that I work
with the most on either of those computers and I can access them. So if I want to work
on the document, on the course outline that I’m working on right now, I can simply go
to that file. I can open the actual document and I can work on it, save it and now it’s
the same on my notebook as it is in the sync in the Cloud and here on my desktop. So it
works very simply and effectively from that perspective.
Before I finish though, I do want to show you mobile access because mobile access is
increasingly important for all of these different services that we’re talking about. For SugarSync,
having access to our iPhone, iPad, or our Android device is also crucial. So here we
see my iPhone is up and I’m going to go into my Productivity tab here. I hope that
I have got SugarSync there. Do I have it? There it is. Yup. I tap on the SugarSync icon
and up comes SugarSync. Now the difference is when I’m in the File
Manager on the computer itself, I don’t see my mobility devices. That’s because
no documents actually live on this device. It’s more about having this device being
able to access my computer, the different documents that I have on my other computers.
But here I can see the management area within the iPhone itself and if I want to see the
files that are on my office computer or my notebook, I tap there and we see the same
file structure. Now if I want to download those documents,
if I want to say, get a couple of PDFs onto my iPhone or iPad, what I do is I just tap
on the little right-hand side there, on the little arrow, and then it allows me to sync
this to my phone directly so I can make sure I have those documents accessible to me all
the time even when I’m not online. It’s a way of getting those documents into the
iPhone. And this process works the exact same way on the iPad as it does on the iPhone.
So let me call up my iPad and it works the same in Android as well. Let me call it up.
Let’s get it displaying. There we go. Hello, Mr. iPad. You’re going to knock me out of
the way, are you? Fair enough. So let’s go into SugarSync here on my iPad and we see
we’ve got a little more space so they can give us a little bit structure as far as the
file management goes but there we see the exact same list of devices. Now I can go into
my office Macintosh just like I did on my iPhone. I have the same choices as far as
being able to see all my documents and if I tap the on the little right-hand arrow,
I can sync it to my iPad as well. Now SugarSync also incorporates some extra
nice features around sharing and backing up your photos and your music but as far as I’m
concerned, the sweet spot for SugarSync, if you’ll excuse the pun, is really the person
who has a complex file management system and folder structure within their computer they
want to be able to share and to access with themselves, not necessarily with other. Sharing
files with others, I prefer Dropbox. SugarSync gives us a little more security with the password
protection. It allows us to work with the structure that we live with already.
I hope you found this useful. If you want to see more of our videos, drop by DottoTech.com
or subscribe to us in your YouTube channel. I’m Steve Dotto. Thanks for spending time
with me today. [END OF VIDEO]
Steve Dotto0How to Use Sugarsync0October 28, 2012
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