push.cx
Peter Bhat Harkins
Retracting my JungleDisk Recommendation
Over the last few years I’ve recommended JungleDisk to a lot of people, so a blog post is the most efficient way to retract that recommendation.
I’ve been increasingly dissatisfied with it since Rackspace bought the company. They added a monthly fee on top of storage costs for no reason, stopped issuing source code to a standalone program for retrieving data, performance hasn’t kept up with my growth in usage (open dialog to choose which files to back up, get coffee), it does an 80MB download on every startup, backups of even a few K finish with a tens-of-megs metadata upload, and now they plan to reduce client-side functionality.
2. New Web-based User Interface
In the spirit of flexibility and accessibility, the next release will have the configuration and setup totally managed via a web-based user interface vs. one that is incorporated into the computer’s operating system. In one simple interface, you will be able to manage every user and computer in a secure web experience that is familiar regardless if you are managing a Windows, Mac or Linux machine. This aspect of the update has been a huge undertaking for us because we want this to be a great user experience. Luckily, we have some pretty amazing talent that is helping us to build a truly awesome UI. The Road Ahead from the JungleDIsk blog
While JungleDisk used to sport “you don’t have to trust us” encryption, this new UI means they’ll need to keep a list of all of your files. And as much as I love the web, the desktop UI to JungleDisk is already painfully slow and clunky; the web adds network latency, browser overhead, and a much-reduced selection of widgets.
This is the last straw for me. After surveying the field I’ve settled on tarsnap. I’ll write another post with more information on why I chose it and how I’ve set it up (it’s a pretty low-level tool) when I’ve finished the big re-upload, cleaned up the remainders of JungleDisk, and settled into a regular rhythm.