The CapMac Blog

The Publisher’s SIG has found a new location.  Starting with the August meeting the group will be meeting at the 9503 Research Marie Callender’s location.  This restaurant is located in the same area as Best Buy, across the highway from the Arboretum .  This is a great central location and Marie Callender’s offers a wide variety of food choices.

The FileMaker Pro SIG is changing meeting date and location.  Make a note on your calendar if this is one of your “have to” meetings.  The August meeting information is:

Ya never know what you will find at a CapMac SIG meeting.  The attendees at the July Advanced Photo SIG were treated to a great program about lighting techniques by SIG leader Alex Suarez.  Alex brought all his personal equipment and demonstrated it’s use plus sharing all kinds of tips and techniques.

Not only that, but everyone who attended the SIG had a chance to take home their choices from a unique collection of cameras, some quite old and special.  The cameras were donated to the SIG by professional photographer John Langford, who was a presenter at the June SIG meeting.

When you miss meetings, you never know what you might miss.  Following are photos of some of the cameras.  Thanks to Andy Masuo for sharing his photos.

If you use an RSS reader to aggregate your news, you can use CapMac’s RSS feeds to subscribe to the CapMac Blog. CapMac currently has two RSS feeds. The feed for the blog itself is feed://www.capmac.org/?feed=rss2, but CapMac also has a separate feed for the Special Interest Group (SIG) schedule. The address for that feed is feed://www.capmac.org/sig_rss.php.

It is often said there are two kinds of computer users: those who have lost data, and those who will. But it doesn’t have to be that way. With the right backup procedures, you can minimize or event prevent ever losing any of your precious files.

This month’s presentation will feature SuperDuper creator Dave Nanian of Shirt Pocket Software and the CapMac Server Admin Team talking about backup solutions and strategies for your Mac from hardware to software to cloud based solutions. We’ll discuss the best ways and practices to minimize data loss if and when something goes wrong with your computer.

For a limited time you can register to attend the expo portion of Macworld 2011 at no cost.  The show will be January 27-29 in San Francisco.

As a bonus, select Macworld exhibitors are offering exclusive summer pricing on Apple-related products. Register today and take advantage of these special discounts for registered attendees!

Free Expo Only registration expires July 26th.

PCsync version 6, by Laplink Software, Inc., Bellevue, WA

by Peter Roll

CapMac  (Austin’s Premier Macintosh User Group, Austin, TX

PCsync v.6 is the latest release of a program by a company (Laplink Software, Inc., http://www.laplink.com/) with a long history of hardware and software for transferring files from one computer to another.  Back in the olden days (1980’s, early 1990’s), Laplink was known among both Mac and PC users for its cables and software to transfer files between a desktop and a laptop computer, or between two desktops.  Since then, its products have been focused on the much larger PC-windows market.  The new v.6 of PCsync brings the Mac back into its fold to migrate files to or from a Mac to a PC, and then to keep folders in sync between the two platforms and/or to transfer files in either direction between the computers.

The market for PCsync is most clearly defined in the company’s own literature.

• … users working with a variety of computers throughout the day can quickly and easily synchronize large files and folders between PCs running Windows 7, Windows Vista, XP and even Macs. (Laplink press release for v.6 of PCsync)
• This is a single-user, multiple computer license, which means you are authorized to use the Software on up to a total of three (3) computers that are used by you (e.g., office, laptop and home computer); provided however, a valid license must be purchased for each person who will use the Software. (PCsync EULA)

Priced at $39.95 per copy list, PCsync v.6 can currently be found at Amazon for about $24.

PCSync has a split-window FTP user interface to transfer and sync files between two computers, using a drag-and drop process. It is not suited for initial migration of settings (e-mail, bookmarks, address books, calendars, etc.) from a Windows computer to a Mac, as is Apple’s Migration Assistant. It is well-suited to maintaining shared folders of documents and other files on group of PCs and Macs — it facilitates moving and copying such folders between PCs or a PC and a Mac over a local network (or USB or Ethernet cable), and then keeping the folders in sync with each other to enable shared access and transfer of whichever version is needed (PC or Mac) to colleagues, publishers, business partners, etc.

A PCsync user needs to be generally familiar with file-transfer processes and the files-and-folders management of windows-based personal computer systems in general. It is not a program suited to a person uncomfortable with computer operating systems and file management; IT experience is not needed. The program will be most useful and cost-effective when the group of computers is small, and when it is frequently necessary to transfer or synchronize files between pairs of machines. If transfers and syncs are infrequent, other tools and techniques, using features of both PC and Mac operating systems, may do the job adequately and more cost-effectively.

Documentation is not outstanding in the PCsync Quick-Start Manual for the PC and the Quick-Start Host Manual for the Mac, but it’s OK.  Mac users should be aware that there are two ways in which the Mac and PC are not treated equally:

• in a pairwise Mac-PC connection, the Mac with the PCsyncHost program installed and running is defined as the “Host“ computer, with the PC identified as a client; but the control of all processes rests with the PC.
• the Migration Wizard is located in PCsync on the PC and serves to transfer files only from the PC to the Mac; normal file transfer functions are used to copy or move content from the Mac to the PC.

The most complex and potentially useful feature of PCsync is a set of options for syncing folders of files that are frequently changed by multiple editors, where keeping older versions of some files may be important. These options include user to intervention to control what happens to specific files.  The logic for this process must be thought out carefully by the user.  This task is made a little easier by a series of examples in the PCsync User Guide, showing how the options work for one- and two-way synchronization of files between two folders.

So how well does PCsync work?  Well, I tested it by copying a 50 MB folder of miscellaneous nested folders and files, first from an iMac (OS X 10.6.3) to a Windows 7 laptop, and then syncing back and forth to check that changes in the files were properly done.  Here are results of those tests:

• Setting up a connection works through a wired Ethernet LAN and through a direct Ethernet connection. It would not work through my wireless LAN connection to one of the computers — don’t know why and more time spent on this should result in success. I couldn’t lay my hands on a USB cable to try that, but I assume it would work as well as the direct connection, and maybe faster.
• Frequent “internal error” messages came up during transfers from the iMac to Windows, which often aborted the process. These did not occur when files which Windows could not read were deleted; most of these were Mac files combining XML and other content into a single Unix package file, much as Microsoft Office 2007 does for the .docx and other XML formats.
• Otherwise, once set up and tested, and with the non-Windows files removed (a good idea even if this transfer had worked!),  PCsync did the job it was intended to do reliably.

The results of these tests made it clear to me that the most useful feature of PCsync is synchronization of selected folders of files (including embedded folders) between a few Mac and PC computers (limited to 3 computers per individual license by the EULA).  When this syncing process is recurring often enough, PCsync can be a time-saver, whether just between PCs or including Macs, and particularly using its ability to schedule automatic operations. There are other ways of doing this, and there may be other programs that do it, but I’m not aware of them.

So, in summary, if your circumstances match PCsync’s capabilities, you may want to try it out.  There isn’t a free trial available, but there is a money-back guarantee.

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This review is written by a Mac user who has, for over a decade, maintained a lab and classroom as it grew from 4 Windows and 1 Mac, to 31 Windows and 10 Macs, serving the Sun City, TX Computer Club of about 3,000 members living in an age-restricted community near Austin, TX.  The audience for this review, however, is the membership of the CapMac User Group in Austin, — a much smaller club with a more diverse and more technically-involved membership.

You don’t want to miss our July general meeting because one of our favorite speakers will be there – that right – Bob “Dr. Mac” Levitus, author of over 55 books, including iPad For Dummies, iPhone For Dummies, Incredible iPhone Apps For Dummies, and Mac OS X Snow Leopard For Dummies. His topic is “The Best Things for Apple Devices are Free.”

The meeting is July 13th, 7 pm, at Sherlock’s Baker’s Street Pub.

On Thursday (June 24th) we will feature photographer John Langford speaking on his Box Humana project as well as some of his other work. For Box Humana, John collaborated with more than 70 subjects to capture an impressive collection of images set in the simplest of settings, a plywood box. Come hear John’s thoughts and stories and enjoys some great photography on Thursday evening.

Also, John is doing something most people only dream about. He is pulling up roots and beginning an amazing worldwide journey. This is your chance to meet John before he embarks on this grand adventure. After this, you’ll only be able to follow his adventures on his blog www.cosmiccandidcamera.com.

Don’t miss this event. Do your friends a favor and bring them along on Thursday. Here are the details:

• Next Meeting: Thursday, June 24, 6:30-9:00 PM at Episcopal Church of the Resurrection – Parish Hall
• Address: 2200 Justin Lane (map)
• http://maps.google.com/maps?q=2110+Justin+Lane,+Austin,+TX+78757
Note that the Parish Hall is East of the church building and its parking lot is accessed from Justin Lane. The parking lot entrance is directly across from where Muroc St. intersects Justin Lane.

This event is free and open to the public. Bring your friends! Hope to see you there!

For information on future (and past) Advanced Photography SIG meetings, please visit www.capmac.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=4408

I apologize for the late announcement, but due to some unexpected last minute job commitments I will not be able to host our next FileMaker SIG meeting on the 22nd.

Please plan on coming to our July meeting on the 27th.  The topic will be “FileMaker Calendaring Techniques – How to build calendars inside FileMaker”.

Pedro Filipowsky

HAAUG, Houston Area Apple Users Group,  has sent us an announcement about a Swap Meet they have scheduled for Saturday, July 17th.

It will be held in the Bellaire Civic Center, 7008 South Rice Ave., Bellaire, TX 77401, from 9 a.m. – 2 p.m.

Information about renting a table can be found here

This month is all about email, setting up and configuring your CapMac email address on our new MacMini Server. CapMac’s Server Administrators will explain the differences between POP mail and IMAP mail and walk through the set up of your account so you can keep your email synced on all of your devices: desktops, notebooks, iPhones, iPads, iPod Touches, even PC’s. We’ll explain how to access your mail from any Internet connected computer in the world via the webmail interface and give you tips and tricks for keeping your Mac OS X Mail application runnings smoothly.