Dropbox Review

Dropbox at a Glance

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Our Rating

3.5 / 5 stars
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Price:

Basic ‚Äì 2gb: Free
Pro 1TB: $9.99/month or $99.00/year
Business: $15.00/user/month

Supports

Windows
Mac
Linux

Pros:

Free 2GB.
Web interface to upload and access files.
Multi Platform Support – Mac, Windows, Linux Compatible
Allows sharing of files.
Easy to use
Offers a mobile application for iPhone, Android and Blackberry.

Cons:

Mobile applications limited in functionality.
In April 2011, Dropbox modified its privacy policy. “We may disclose to parties outside Dropbox files stored in your Dropbox and information about you that we collect when we have a good faith believe that disclose is reasonably necessary.” For a zero knowledge service try SpiderOak.

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I have been using Dropbox for over two years now to sync files between my laptop and my main desktop and I have to say that the beauty of Dropbox is how simple it is. Install it on the computers you want to sync files with and simply drag and drop the files and folders you want to sync between computers. Simplicity is a good thing, why make something complicated if it does not have to be.

After you download and install Dropbox on your computer you can create an account. To sync files between another computer simply download and install the appropriate version of Dropbox for that computer. For example I sync files between my Ubuntu Linux laptop and my Windows desktop. Once you have created your account with Dropbox, simply login to the same account on all the computers you want to sync. After the software is installed you will have a new folder on your computer called Dropbox. All the folders and files that are copied to that folder are synced to all the other computers. Those files are also available over the Internet using the Dropbox web interface.

Dropbox also makes it easy to allow public access to some of your files. Inside of your Dropbox folder there is a subfolder called Public. Any folder or file inside of the Public folder is exactly that, public and accessible to the world. Have a large document you need to send to a client or coworker. You can add it to the Public folder, copy the publicly accessible link and have them download the document. You could even host a simple website hosted entirely in your Drobox Public folder. For example I created a simple HTML file to show this review.

You can also share folders and files with people that are not inside of the public folder. You can create a shared folder and invite others users to collaborate with you on its contents. This makes Dropbox perfect for businesses allowing employees to work on the same documents from where ever they are.

Dropbox does have an iPhone and Android application available that you can use to access your files from your smartphone. Sync and upload functionality varies depending on the platform. The mobile web interface is accessible from many mobile devices. Mobile access makes it very easy to upload via the web the latest photo you have taken on your phone that you want to keep safe or any other document that you want to make sure you do not lose.

If you find you email files to yourself on a regular basis, carry a USB drive around, like to share photos with your friends and family and want to have access to your most important files from anywhere then Dropbox is a fantastic service and one you should check out. It will make the syncing of files between your computers so easy you will not know how you lived without Dropbox.

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Comments

23 responses to “Dropbox Review”

Nico Julius

I’ve been using Dropbox for 2 years now. I used to carry a usb-stick with me everywhere, but Dropbox is so much easyer and safer!

Reply
Glennette

Nice review! Good news, there is an app for Blackberry now! I’ll be downloading it soon!

Glennette Goodbread

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Paul

I have been using DropBox on my MacBook Air for months, and it is fantastic. I also have a MobileMe account, but Apple’s iDisk is slow and clunky, so I prefer DropBox.

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Richard

I have been using Dropbox for over 1 year now. Whenever you use a product its never perfect, but Dropbox comes pretty damn close. I was a Sales Rep, and would create folders for all my dealers, then simply invite them, and share hundreds of files. I’m now part of a interstate company, with 3 office locations, and we use Dropbox daily. The other day, onsite, it was quicker and easier to use Dropbox to transfer a file to my colleague, whom was sitting next to me, than to get my USB stick out !!
Now thats saying something.

Reply
Jason

Dropbox also has android and blackberry support now.

Reply
1. John
  
  Thanks, I will have to update the page.
  
  Reply
Joe

To me, a major shortcoming of Dropbox is that you cannot designate any folder -or folders- on your computer to be Dropbox-synched folders; only the “official” Dropbox folder syncs. That means that you have to copy individual redundant copies of selected files onto the “official” folder. To me, that is a deal-breaker for what I want to do, which is to sync some existing folders among computers.

Reply
1. John
  
  You can use symbolic links to do what you are talking about and not copy folders to the Dropbox folder. It works great on Mac and Linux. It works on Windows Vista and Windows 7 as well, but the behavior is slightly different. Dropbox talks about this in their wiki.
  
  Reply
2. Ben
  
  Try searching for a tool called synctoy. It works well for me
  
  Reply
  1. John
    
    If you are referring to Microsoft Synctoy it works ok to sync files between computers. It lacks the ability to access files online or with your mobile device though.
    
    Reply
Scott

Not being computer literate, I’m having trouble understanding whether I can download photos from a Dropbox account onto CD’s or print to photographic paper on a printer. If anyone has experience with this, please respond.

Reply
Andrew

I’ve checked several notable reviews on Dropbox, and it seems to be a great program. Granted no software or online web sharing/storage program is perfect, Dropbox appears to have minimal cons.
Check out http://freeitis.blogspot.com/2010/07/free-secure-online-file-sharing-and.html for more information. I also linked this site as one of the respectable reviews.

Reply
Jack Murgia

I’ve found Dropbox to be a handy tool for creating a file upload system on a website, and for text files- but it has a nasty bug with OS X files that are in package format (breaks them into their individual components- try the latest Quicken file format for example).

As with any application built on top of Amazon’s S3 storage platform, one must remember that S3 is not a filesystem. Products like Dropbox and Jungledisk that attempt to make S3 appear to be a filesystem will suffer from performance handicaps and problems like the one I have described above. One open source alternative that is gaining steam is iFolder- developed by Novell years ago and in it’s second year as an Open Source project.

Reply
teddy

dropbox now has iphone support.

greetings

“Dropbox does not have an iPhone or other mobile application that you can use to sync and upload files with, but the web interface is accessible from many mobile devices.”

Reply
1. John
  
  Correct. I have adjusted the information. Thanks.
  
  Reply