Compare And Contrast

I’ve been using computers for a very long time and I’ve discovered some interesting software along the way. When I first upgraded from a 386 to my first Pentium running Windows 95, I thought I was in digital Heaven! With a whopping 2G hard drive, I had room to store every graphic and file I could find. And I did just that.

When you add internet access to the mix, and my obsession with new software, tutorials, and instruction documents, it’s no wonder my 2G hard drive filled up so quickly. I’m a digital packrat and I certainly packed that hard drive full. Being the tweaker that I am, I set about searching for ways to free up space using various utilities and disk cleaners. One thing I discovered in my searching was that I had many duplicate files. I also had files in various folders with the same name. Problem was, I didn’t know if it was just the name that was the same or the file as well. When you have hundreds of graphics, going through them one by one can be daunting.

Way back then, I had some software that would do a basic file compare, although I never did figure out exactly how it worked. Oh, I could do some basic comparison, but the software was really not that stable and my computer would usually crash before I was able to do what I really needed. Since that time, I’ve searched for software that would compare folders and files, not just for cleanup but also because I now have multiple computers and sometimes I need the same data on each machine.

I’ve finally found a file compare utility that works flawlessly. Compare Suite is a quick download and installed on both my Windows XP machine and my Windows 98SE machine. Just out of curiosity, since the site doesn’t list Windows Vista in the system requirements, I installed it on my Vista machine and was thrilled to find that it works on that platform as well.

I decided to do some comparisons so first up was a folder comparison. My Windows 98 machine is the most cluttered of my computers so I chose a couple folders and watched as Compare Suite showed me just how many duplicates I have! No wonder I’m running out of space! I also noticed that my Windows XP laptop is getting full and I suspect it’s because I have two Wordpress installs on it, for when I’m testing themes and plugins. I compared the two themes folders and found that I’m duplicated a number of those. What a waste of hard drive space!

I noticed a number of text files with the same or similar names also, so I did a text file compare to determine if they were the same or if I’m just not very creative when naming my files. Uh, a little of both since some were identical files, saved in two different locations, and some were different files with the same name. I can’t imagine how I would have discovered those files if I hadn’t been using Compare Suite to make the task easier!

Finally, I decided to compare some files on two of my jump drives with the files on both my Windows 98 and Windows XP machines. These are my soap and toiletries formula files and website files. I need to keep these synced so I was anxious to test Compare Suite in that capacity. Sure enough, I was able to easily sync the two computers to each other as well as to the jump drive. Perfect!

It sure would have been great if I could have found a software solution like this over a decade ago when I first bought my Windows 95 machine. I really needed it then. But I need it now, too, and I’m glad I found Compare Suite. This one is a keeper!

If you give it a try, please drop me a line and let me know how you like it. You get a 30 day evaluation period, so there’s nothing to lose. And you might find out that you really can’t live without it, just like I’m discovering. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.