Here are some examples of how I use rsync. To backup my wife's home directory, which consists of large MS word files and mail folders I use a cron job that runs rsync -Cavz . I then do cvs operations on the remote machine, which saves a lot of time as the remote cvs protocol isn't very efficient. Many of the command line options have two variants, one short and one long. These are shown below separated by commas.
Some options only have a long variant.
This option increases the amount of information you are given during the transfer. By default rsync works silently. A single -v will give you information about what files are being transferred and a brief summary at the end. Two -v flags will give you information on what files are being skipped and slightly more information at the end. This option turns off this behaviour.