Recently I have been working both from my office PC and my iMac at home.  (I keep a PC at the office for old times sake) and have had to move some big files back and forth between the two.  I’m talking Gigabyte size files.  Really big ones.  Huge, in fact.

I’ve been using LogMeIn Pro which allows me to do file transfer directly between machines over the Internet.  It’s basically a drag the file from one machine and drop it to the other machine process.  It works well and I have no complaints.  It’s also expensive!  Unlike the free version that only allows you to remotely control another computer, the Pro version allows you to transfer files as well as do remote control (and a whole bunch of other things.)

This is a good solution for computers that I own and and don’t mind paying for a service.  But what about transferring a large file to a client?  I don’t want to install LogMeIn Pro on their machines.  I could use a service like YouSendIt which lets me upload the file to their servers and then pass a link to my client so that they can download the file.  But, there is a charge for that, and my file ends up on someone else’s server.  Hardly ideal for privacy freaks.

So, I was delighted to find Sendoid today.  This service works a bit like LogMeIn Pro in that it establishes a secure link between my computer and the client’s computer.  Once the link is established a computer to computer transfer takes place!  It’s encrypted so theoretically it’s secure, and your file doesn’t stop at their servers…it just goes directly from your machine to the machine that you want it to go to.

You can do the whole thing online without any registration, or you could download an AdobeAir desktop app that does everything for you.  But, as I mentioned, it can all be done online so there is nothing to install at either end.

The capabilities of your computer determine the size of the file that you can send and Sendoid automatically calculates if the file is too large.  Practically speaking, the size will range between 600 MB to 1 GB.  The desktop version removes those restrictions and they say that you can send any size file.

I went ahead and installed the desktop version on my iMac and on my PC at the office.  I then sent a large file between the two and was astonished at the speed. It was just as fast as transfers that I have done using LogMeIn Pro…but this time I did it for free!

You might want to check this one out.