Do you have more then one computer? A desktop computer and a laptop maybe? Have you ever wanted to share files between computers without having to copy them over yourself. Or just have your files up to date no matter which computer you are at? Then you should check out dropbox.
Dropbox is a small program that resists in the system tray and gives you online storage for your files and synchronize the files between your computers. Let me give you a small example. You are sitting at home with your desktop computer and working on a document. You save the draft in your dropbox folder and grab your laptop and head over to a friend. Once you log onto your dropbox on the laptop over at your friend, then it will sync your document from dropbox. The document is there as you left it and you can continue work on it again on the laptop. Once you get home and turn on you desktop computer then updated document will once again be sync’ed from dropbox and any chance you made on it will be there. This is without you ever moving the document. All it requires is a internet connection. You files will always be up to date.
But that’s not all dropbox is useful for. Want to share pictures with your friends? Then put your pictures in your dropbox photo folder. Log on the dropbox website and you can get a link to the album with pictures. This could be a link like this: Pictures of some of my cats
Now lets say we want to share a document that we created then thats also possible. Go into your dropbox folder and right click on the file and select dropbox>Copy public link. That will gives us a link that we can paste to a chat or webpage like this. This is a file I have linked: dropbox Review. This file will also update as I write new things in it on my computer. Ideal to share files that you don’t mind other looking at while you work on them.
So what have we learned so far. Dropbox lets on sync files between our computers with little effort. It makes it easy to share files and photos. But is it worth it? YES if you have more then one computer you work at and want to be able to access your files anywhere then this a the program to get.
When you install dropbox you get 2 GB of online storage for free. This is enogh if you just need to share small files, but if you want to get more space you have to pay for it. Right now the only option is a 50 gb upgrade that costs 9$ per month or 99$ per year. This a pretty big step and I would wish there was more options. But the developers also say more options will be avaible later. The program is available for windows, mac and linux and allows sharing between all three systems. This is wonderful is you work with both macs and pc.
My only complain right now is that there aren’t a do not sync option. If you have a one of the new mini netbooks then you can quickly run out of space if you are on the 50 gb plan. But as far as I can find out, this is something they are working on. One more thing might be secruity. So far I have had no problems, but it would be useful if there was a way to encrypt your files on the remote server, so even if the files was comprimised they would not be able to read them. As it stands right now I would not put any file you would want to keep secret on the server.
This is a wonderful little application that I use with great joy to share small files between my laptop and desktop computer. Its very easy to use and most people should be able to figure this one out fairly easy. It still needs some work, but as it is now I have no problems using it or recommending it to others. The program can do much more then I have written here. But I will leave that up to you to explore.
Only thing I have left to add is my rating. And that is 3.5 out of 5.
Tags: dropbox, getdropbox, linux, mac, online storage, windows