I know this might be the news of yesterday or even last year to a lot of people. But I still like to submit a tiny post for those who, like me a couple of weeks ago, haven’t heard nothing about this great little thing called Dropbox. If you already got it or know everything about it you can stop reading now. And no, I’m not getting payed for writing this.. I wish I was though..
So what is it?
It’s an easy way of storing and sharing files online. It works like this: Go to getdropbox.com and download the thing. After installation you will have a folder where you can just “drop” the stuff you want to share or store. If you’re not at your own computer or if you got several of them.. ehm.. several computers I mean.. you got two choices. You can either download Dropbox to your other computer or simply use their website to access your “dropped files”.
Why do I need it?
There is a number of reasons why this might be useful to you. I’ll give you three good reasons.
1. You use more than one computer and are dead tired of moving all your files from one computer to the other.
2. You work in a project and you need to share files with the other members in the project. Ok, now some of you will say: “That problem is already solved. I got subversion.” Well, it’s not always great to check out things that is one GB+. (Just talking out of experience) So if you got a lot of big files I think Dropbox could be a great compliment to your subversion-stuff.
3. You are working with a client who think attaching things like a document to an email is a super-complicated process for which they need your support, by phone or in person, to do (every time!). They probably would find it a lot easier if you simply told them to ” just put all the files you want to give me in this folder”.
What’s the bad stuff?
Dropbox is free as long as you don’t feel the need to share more than 2GB. If you do you need to pay up. And yea, a thing to watch out for. If your computer doesn’t have a lot of space or are old and slow remember to unshare the folders you don’t need so your computer doesn’t end up in a bad state.
There was once this phrase: “Drop it like it’s hot.” I’ve heard they changed it now to “Drop it like it’s Dropbox”.
