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Wednesday, 22 December 2010

Dropbox hits 1.0, gets lighter, faster, and adds selective syncing

by Matthew Rogers on December 17, 2010 at 07:00 AM

Dropbox has been around for so long and become so indispensable for so many people, that it's tough to remember that the spry little utility has been in beta all along. Not any longer -- the Dropbox team has announced that their baby has officially left the nursery, and version 1.0.10 is available for download right now. You may actually have to go to the site to get it -- Dropbox has never been known for auto-updating.

The folks at Dropbox are particularly proud of this release, which they've for some reason dubbed "Rainbow Shell." Most changes will be completely transparent to the average user, but quite a bit of work's been done to the client over the last few months. For starters, the syncing engine's been overhauled to not only sync files faster, but to use up to 50% less memory doing it.

New users should now have an easier time setting up Dropbox, as the initial setup wizard's been redesigned with ease of use in mind. Mac users should be a bit happier with their client too, because it's been rebuilt to use Cocoa only, and looks much more native in OS X.

The one thing that's sure to be noticed by users however, is the addition of selective syncing, which allows you to choose which files or folders will get synced with each computer. That option can be found in the Dropbox preferences, in the advanced section, and it only applies to the system on which the client is installed. That way you can set your netbook to only sync music files, your work computer to grab all your documents, and your home computer to sync everything the other two have to offer.

But for the most part, this release is about heaping piles of bug-fixes, and the Dropbox team is extremely enthusiastic about the amount of problems they've worked out. It's certainly been a tough job to make a file-syncing system that works seamlessly between Windows, Mac and Linux, and that's without adding mobile devices to the mix. Tags: apps, cloud, dropbox, linux, os x, OsX, productivity, sync, utilities, windows

View the original article here

Thursday, 18 November 2010

Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac is significantly faster than 2008/2004

Filed under: Macintosh, Office, Productivity, Microsoft

The bods over at MacTech have been putting the Microsoft Business Unit's latest Mac offering, Office 2011, though its metaphorical paces, and have found that, on the whole, it's significantly faster than its previous siblings Office 2008 and 2004. App launches are around 70% faster from cold and 98% faster on relaunch, a noticeable and welcome improvement for the user. That's not all, common tasks in the big four applications, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, have also been streamlined giving an average speed up of between 36 and 129%.

The usual disclaimer is in force here -- measured by a stop watch, might not be accurate, etc -- but MacTech was adamant that on the face of it, the whole Office suite for Mac has seen real-world speed improvements that directly affect the user, something to which we can personally attest. Impressive stuff indeed, and when combined with ditching Entourage for Outlook, Office 2011 makes a worthy upgrade.

[via 9to5Mac]Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac is significantly faster than 2008/2004 originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 18 Nov 2010 05:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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