De ontwikkelaars van Microsoft hebben een nieuwe versie van SyncToy uitgebracht en deze via het Download Center beschikbaar gesteld, te weten 1.4. SyncToy behoort tot de PowerToys-familie van Microsoft en is ontwikkeld om in Windows Vista bestanden tussen computers en directory's te verplaatsen, te kopiëren, te hernoemen of te verwijderen. Het programma werd oorspronkelijk ontwikkeld voor Windows XP, maar is sinds de eerste uitgave zodanig onder handen genomen dat versie 1.4 het .NET Framework 2.0 nodig heeft en alleen werkt op Windows Vista. Wat er precies veranderd is in de nieuwbakken SyncToy is niet bekend. Wel hebben we een volgend overzicht van het ontwikkeltraject klaargezet:
SyncToy was released as a beta in early August 2005 for Windows XP. We collected feedback from the discussion forum on the Windows XP Professional Photography web site, from customer feedback surveys, from a large number of professional and hobbyist photographers at Microsoft, and from various world-wide forums, sites, reviews and blogs on the web. Most of you (55%) asked for the ability to type in a UNC path to select a folder. We added this feature between the beta release and the v1.0 release. Features we added in response to customer feedback include:In March 2006 we again listened to feedback and release v1.2, which fixes a bug caused by Daylight Saving Time changes, and also added some documentation updates. In October 2006, in response to customer demand, we released SyncToy 1.4 for Windows Vista. This version has all the features and functionality of the previous version. It requires the .NET Framework 2.0 (and takes advantage of the improvements available in the 2.0 version of the Framework) and it has been improved to run on Windows Vista.[break]
- The ability to type in a UNC path;
- Support for longer folder pair names and ability to widen the left pane to see those longer names;
- The ability to support the maximum length for folder paths, and documentation was added to the help file about how to set up a share to be able to sync deep folder pairs;
- Better handling of the difference in precision between NTFS and FAT timestamps;
- More discoverable link to the help file for information on how to schedule SyncToy using the Windows XP Task Scheduler;
- Support for 800x600 screen resolution;
- Added a warning for users if the selected action will take some time to complete;
- Added brief explanations of the actions in the user interface;
- Improved behavior when choosing folders to include or exclude when there are large numbers of folders involved;
- Improved support for accessibility modes.