The ability to maintain identical, synchronized copies of a single library on multiple computers is one of the most important features in Sente 6. This is the first of two posts discussing this new feature.
Most people care about synchronization because they work on two or more computers and they want all their data on each at all times. Additions and edits on any computer should be automatically reflected on all others. PDFs obtained on one computer should be automatically available on all others. Ideally, one should not have to think about the synchronization process at all, and it should be possible to make changes on any copy of the library at any time. Furthermore, it should be possible to make changes even when one's computer is off-line and changes should be propagated the next time the computer is on-line.
Synchronized libraries in Sente 6 will do this.
In addition, some users want to share their library with colleagues. They might want to share their library with their entire lab or department. Or maybe they are part of a distributed collaboration and everyone wants access to the same library. These Sente users typically want to be able to give some other users limited (or full) edit capability, and read-only access to others. They may also need to be able to restrict access to attachments for some users, while granting full access to others. And, of course, they want this ability to scale to any number of synchronized copies of a library.
Synchronized libraries in Sente 6 will also do this.
One other benefit of synchronization in Sente 6 is that once it is turned on, one can restore a complete, up-to-date copy of the library on any computer at any time, including attachments. This means that some people will use synchronization even if they have only one computer, just to know that they will not lose their library, even if they lose their computer.
We think synchronized libraries in Sente 6 address all the major needs that we have heard from our users over the past few years. If you can think of something that we have forgotten, please let us know.
In my next post, I will say a little more about how synchronization works in Sente 6.
Sente 6 is currently being distributed only as a private preview. The official release is scheduled for September 2009. Anyone who purchases a Sente 5 license now will receive a free upgrade to Sente 6 when it is released.
If you guys can pull this off, I may even forgive you for ignoring a bunch of my "This can't be too hard" requests over the years :-P
What would be killer would be to use the cloud? How about getting together with CiteULike guys? :) (I use a mixture of platforms including library machines - the sync'd library idea is nice but it won't solve this problem)
Yes, this really is impressive. But I'd also like to echo Will above in hoping for synch ability with CiteULike. Maybe Sente could store my CiteULike login info in Preferences, or something along those lines?