Welcome to DropCopy! We think something like this was a long time coming and we hope it proves to be as useful to you as it is to us. DropCopy is free and unrestricted for personal use (up to three machines per network - a typical home network environment) and $25 for an unlimited site-license.

As DropCopy is designed to stay out of your way as much as possible, the primary means of accessing the prefs and menu options is through a menu-extra at the top right-hand-corner of your screen. You should see a small circle icon roughly next to the date, airport and bluetooth menubar icons once you have launched DropCopy. This is the default behaviour but you can change it later in the prefs if you wish.

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How to use DropCopy: bring up the list of DropCopy destinations (i.e. the names of other machines running DropCopy) by dragging a file onto the drop zone (the circle in the upper left-hand-corner of your desktop), or choose 'Show Destinations' from the menu. Don't drop the file yet - only release the dragged file once you have dragged it onto a destination in the list.

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Clipboard sharing: read a remote clipboard by choosing 'Get Clipboard' from the DropCopy menu: its contents will be copied into YOUR clipboard.  Voila!  (There's also an approval option if you don't want the clipboard to be read by just anyone who comes asking for it.)

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Messaging: send a single short message to a remote machine by double-clicking their name in the list of destinations.  Hint: you can bring up the list of destinations by right-clicking on the dropzone.

Most FAQuestion: what does this do that iChat's peer-to-peer copying routine doesn't?  

A: the other person does not have to have iChat on, doesn't have to approve anything or be bothered in any way, and DropCopy was designed to take up far less screen real estate than an iChat buddy list.  Plus it handles clipboard sharing, direct IP connections across the internet, SFTP uploads and short text messages.

Caveats:

* firewalls - DropCopy uses port 5052 for data transfer.  If you have the default firewall engaged this port will be blocked.  In order for DropCopy to work you will either have to open that port or turn off your firewall.  Directions for how to add a firewall rule can be found on our website: http://10base-t.com

* when dragging multiple files or folders to be copied, DC first makes an archive of those files.  This process is instantaneous with small files but can take some time if you have a folder with many large files (i.e. > 100meg).  DropCopy will warn you if it thinks the folder is too large.

* multiple users on the same machine - currently, copying to multiple users logged in on the same machine is not supported.  Only the active user can host a DropCopy destination.

* resource forks / custom icons - custom icons are not preserved by default.  To preserve the custom icon of a file, hold down <option> while dragging the file to the drop zone.  N.B.: this may add considerably to the time of the transfer depending on the size of the file, as the file is first archived to preserve the resource fork.

enjoy!

-the 10base-t team