A happy user

Submitted by anutron on Sat, 09/13/2008 - 1:48pm

First, a caveat: I'm a developer and I run OSX86 on my pc most of the time. I run windoze to play games and, occassionally, Linux for other things (I ran Ubuntu for about a year before switching to the Hackintosh). Consequently, the biggest turn off - the fact that Dropbox only works on a specific folder in your My Documents directory - doesn't apply to me most of the time, because on Linux and OSX you can create soft links to other directories.  That out of the way...

I love this product. I have a laptop (a macbook pro that I also develop on), a pc at home (that runs several different operating systems with file systems that are not readable by each other), and a pc at work. I mostly use Dropbox to keep all these machines and operating systems in synch. After the first synch, it's all incremental. So if I'm working on a project that's 200MB of code and assets, the first time it's kinda slow to upload. After that, only files I alter are uploaded and it does this pretty much in real time. When I'm on the road and I open my laptop, my files are there. When I boot into another OS to do something else, my files are there.

Yes, I can solve this problem with other means (ftp, rsync, etc), but Dropbox is by far the most elegant. It's not a backup solution really so much as a synchronization solution.

Further, the system keeps versions of items so if I accidentally overwrite something that I changed only minutes ago (that my backup might not have picked up yet), I can pull down a previous version.

Finally, it's an instant way to share large files. Just drop them in the public folder and send the link to a friend. You can easily share a 100MB of mp3s or videos or photos or whatever.

Right now I only use the free (2GB) version but I'm considering upgrading and synchronizing more of my content. This product is still relatively new and I expect it'll be snatched up by Google or some other gigantor company, but for now they have a healthy community and a product that improves based on that feedback.

-A.N.

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Call me old fashioned

Submitted by zodi on Sat, 09/13/2008 - 1:22pm

I just use an ftp server client on one of my computers to share my files or make them available.  Plus its one of the few things that I can actually get through our corporate firewall.

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Yes this sounds ok and all

Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Fri, 09/12/2008 - 9:24pm

Yes this sounds ok and all but it does'nt really sound realistic to do this. First of all with the fastest internet connection it still takes a while to upload because most upload connection are 1.5mbs and lower. 

Rather huge and speedy hard drives are available now that cost less than $200 for a TB. You can get an external enclosure and use your pc's ESATA port for sharing amongst multiple computers.

For off site saves perhaps but then that would most likely be needed only by executives and buisnesses. The ESATA external drives can be copied and kept in multiple areas. So really a one time expendature would be faster and to me at least seem more secure and cost effective option.

Does anyone really use the free internet based storage that you get with Norton System works? That only has a yearly fee. And I think it's more than 2gigs.  

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I used to use it

Submitted by Carbon on Fri, 09/12/2008 - 1:29pm

Not sure if they changed it but you can only use 1 folder called "MyDropbox" and it had to be in the MyDocs folder.

I dumped it and use Foldershare and Live Mesh now instead.

 

 

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