The latest version of Laplink’s data transfer and synchronisation tool adds Mac compatibility
Keeping your laptop, desktop and other network computers synchronised is a time consuming and difficult business, especially if you opt to manually compare and transfer files.
Life could be much easier with a little automated assistance, and Laplink PCsync 6 delivers just about everything you might need in order to synchronise, backup, mirror or replicate your most important documents.
The program provides a straightforward wizard to simplify the process of creating a new sync job, for instance. In just a few clicks you’re able to define a folder pair (one local folder, one on the remote computer), the sync direction (unidirectional or bidirectional), the type of files to transfer, and what to do if there’s a conflict (such as both files having been updated since the last sync). It couldn’t be much easier to use.
And, while your sync job will run manually by default, a capable scheduler also allows you to set up unattended transfers at the date and time of your choice.
PCsync 6 will work across many different connection types, and a wired or wireless network, one of Laplink’s special USB network cables, or Windows Easy Transfer cables from third-party manufacturers like Belkin are all supported. We found an ancient USB network cable in a drawer, and that worked too.
The PCsync 6 licence allows you to install the program on up to three systems, which can be running almost anything. Windows XP, 2003, Vista and Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit) are all officially supported. Windows Server 2008 isn’t, but appeared to work in our tests. And new to PCsync 6 is a version that will run on Mac OS X (10.5 and 10.6), so you can now synchronise and transfer files between a PC and Mac.
Getting these systems communicating can occasionally be tricky, though. PCsync is supposed to detect and display other computers on your network that are also running the program so that you can make a connection with a click. But in practice we found this rarely happened. Instead we had to manually enter a PC’s IP address before it was recognised.
