Dr. Dobb's is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.


Channels ▼
RSS

.NET

Microsoft Pulls PC-to-PC Sync From Vista


Microsoft confirmed Wednesday that it will yank yet another feature from Windows Vista, this time PC-to-PC Sync, a P2P-based technology for keeping files up-to-date on multiple machines.

"While PC-to-PC Sync is a great feature that improves productivity and collaboration we don't have it at the quality level our customers demand," a company spokesperson said in an e-mail. "As a result the decision was made to remove it from Windows Vista."

Part of a broader synchronization update in Vista -- the operating system will have a prominent Sync Center for all such chores, including synchronizing PCs with servers and mobile -- PC-to-PC Sync was based on peer-to-peer (P2P) technology, and would have let Vista users sync the contents of specialized folders, including the by-default Documents, Pictures, and Music, between multiple PCs on wired or wireless networks.

Analysts characterized the feature as an extension of the old Offline Files technology and the Windows XP SyncToy, with part of the P2P FolderShare utility -- a 2005 acquisition by Microsoft -- thrown in for good measure.

The consumer-oriented PC-to-PC Sync, however, was limited in that it would synchronize files and folders only between machines running Vista, and then apparently only between computers which had the same user account name and password (in other words, between PCs owned and used by the same person).

The departure of PC-to-PC Sync comes just days after Microsoft said it was pulling other features from Office 2007 and letting computer makers install the OS sans the company's new XPS electronic document format, all under pressure from Adobe.

As it has in the past, Microsoft cited quality concerns as the reason for the feature's exit. "

"From the beginning, we have made it clear that the top priority for Windows Vista is quality," the spokesperson said. "This is part of the normal beta process as we constantly evaluate, improve and fine tune the features of Windows Vista."

The spokesperson also said that PC-to-PC Sync would be the last feature to be dropped from Vista, and that it hoped to provide it in some fashion down the road.

"Work on it continues and is something we plan to deliver to our customers in the future," the spokesperson concluded.


Related Reading


More Insights






Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

Dr. Dobb's encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, Dr. Dobb's moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing or spam. Dr. Dobb's further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

 
Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.