File Synchronization Made Easy and Free

Microsoft recently released v1.4 of SyncToy with Windows Vista compatibility. SyncToy is an intuitive GUI tool for synchronizing files between folders and devices that can be downloaded from Microsoft for free. It can be used on Windows Vista or Windows XP, and the latest version requires .NET Framework 2.0 to be installed. In addition to Vista compatibility, Version 1.4 of SyncToy fixes some bugs and updates some documentation from the previous version 1.2 that was released back in March. There are some other tools that allow file synchronization, e.g. AllWay Sync which works beautifully, and my favorite command-line tool called Robocopy, which is part of the Windows 2003 Server Resource Kit. Both of these programs are also free, and are part of my essential tools list.