This is one person's story of upgrading to Windows 7 and how Content Circles came to the rescue.
My computer was slowing down dramatcally. Application behavior was weird. Either my machine was infected or the C:// drive was destined to fail any moment (after three years). In either case, I took the machine to my local computer store (Fry's for you locals), bought the Windows 7 upgrade and a new SATA drive for a fresh install. Not knowing that my desktop machine had room for a third hard drive, I came back to the store expecting the data to have been moved to the new drive. Instead, I now had a third hard drive in my machine with Windows 7 and nothing else. The data migration service was an extra upcharge that they didn't tell me about when I dropped off the system. Not wanting to have to come back, I figured I could do it myself.
In comes Content Circles. While I don't store all of my documents in CC, I had several gigabytes of important files in Content Circles. At first I thought I would just move the directory from the old drive to the CC data folder on the new drive. In comes dozens of alerts from Windows 7 saying that the file name is too long. Huh? It turns out that in Windows 7 Microsoft created a new file hierarchy and buried all the application data one folder deeper in a new folder called 'Roaming'....Whatever...
Many of my thousands of documents ran into this problem. Windows suggests that you update the file name or move the files to a different directory. Of course the Windows 7 alert message doesn't give you any way to find the offending files, other than writing down the file name in the message and then searching on them individually. Sure, that sounds like fun!
Why don't I just let one of the core advantages of Content Circles work for me? I did a quick, simple, clean install of Content Circles on the new C:// drive, logged in and all the circles, folders and files immediately began to replicate onto the fresh drive. Files were being replicated from all the members of all of my Circles that were online, including my laptop and the Content Circles Store and Forward Service. I didn't have to do anything other than log in.
I don't want to keep my files in the cloud. I have confidential documents that I share and collaborate on with other members of the team and outside agencies. I want the files to move directly from my computer to the recipient's computer. I don't want the data sitting on remote servers where I have to upload and download my documents.
This Windows 7 upgrade experience was a crystal clear example of why Content Circles is so valuable. Lose a hard disk? Have you computer stolen, get a virus that corrupts your files? I didn't have to worry for two seconds. Login and the process takes care of itself, all in the background. This enormous value comes even before you use the sophisticated collaboration and content management features of the solution. You don't pay for a dime of outside storage or data transfer fees.
It couldn't be easier.
