What do you do when you have to transfer huge chunks of data from your desktop to your laptop/netook or from your laptop to a netbook? Wi-Fi sharing would do, but what if you do not have internet on both the devices, LAN or probably Bluetooth, that is so slow that you just might decide not to go ahead. What you would most probably do is to look for a huge hard drive for the tedious process of transferring into the hard drive first and then to the other device. Or, you can use an interesting offering from Amkette, Flash Link. The device looks like a pen drive with a micro USB slot on one end.
Sleek, small and black in colour, Amkette Flash Link has 2 indicators on its body that show when the devices are in operation or if only one of them is. Once Flash Link is connected to one of the devices, the inbuilt software, asks one to run the AFLloader in both the devices that are connected using a USB cable. And this happens everytime the devices are connected. And once that is done, the Amkette Flash Link suite opens up with 5 options; Go! Finder, Go! Bridge, Remote Share, Folder Sync and Outlook Sync.
Go Finder is basically the name for the storage part of the device, that is 192 MB. Go! Bridge allows the devices to access each other?s hard drives and copy content from each other or delete documents from each other. One can view pictures, videos and play music directly from the connected device as well. While I tried to view some videos and hear some songs from the other device, there was no stutter both in terms of music or video, which is pretty good.
Remote sharing is quite an interesting feature that allows sharing of the CD drive and the internet connection from the other device. The sharing actually happens once the device sets up a sharing network. The setup takes place every time the connections need to be shared. The netbook could readily access the CD drive in the notebook and I transferred some good amount f data and saw it getting transferred quickly. The internet access is smooth but there is a slight disconnect here. The devices do allow sharing of internet and that to at a decent speed. However, the problem that I came across was that internet could not be accessed on the source device while the internet is being accessed on the connected device. I tried this with both the devices and got the same result. I loved folder sync and like the fact that I would not have to use the hard drive twice and use twice the time to transfer content from my desktop to my notebook and vice-versa. I can just connect both the devices once and let the folders just sync. The folder sync feature works in three ways. Both the devices sync at the same time or one becomes the source for the other. What is necessary here is that both the devices have to have an existing folder with the same name so that the sync can take place. The best thing is that in case you have larger files you can just connect both the devices, go on with your work and be done when it?s done.
Outlook Sync needs both your devices to be configured to your email address and once synced, the emails will be restored in both the devices.
To sum it up, we can say, firstly, the device is a blessing, as I have not come across a device that makes syncing and content transfer this easy and secondly, the price the device is available at makes it a sensible buy too. The initial getting used to apart, the Flash Link is a very good option for data transfer.
? CyberMedia www.LD2.in
Mail:talkLD@cybermedia.co.in