Do you Dropbox?

My thumbdrive has been made obsolete.

Ok yea, I have a number of computers. Three desktops floating around the house right now, two laptops (one going to my sister rather shortly), and then there’s my desktop at work. The home network is great, when I’m at home. But does me no good when I’m at work or out and about with the laptop. So for that, I have been using a 4gig thumbdrive. And it is a pain in the rear when I forget it at work and need it at home or vice-versa.

Well, I no longer have to worry about that, cause now I just Dropbox.

What is Dropbox? In the simplest terms possible, it’s a sync program that keeps a copy of designated files up to date across multiple computers. Dropbox is currently in private beta, but they are adding new folks all the time… just signup for the waiting list. Once you are accepted, you get an email with a link to join up and your beta code.

The heart of Dropbox is a small program that runs in the background. You download it from the Dropbox site and it creates a folder called “My Dropbox” in your My Documents folder (if you are running Windows). Then Dropbox monitors this folder, and anything you put here is copied to their server. Dropbox is available for Windows and Mac, but there is also an early Alpha version for Linux - I was lucky enough to get in on the first round of testers and have been using it on my home box for over a week now. The screen shots you see here are from that computer, but the Win and Mac versions all operate the same basic way.

From the web interface you can browse your folders/files, download them, upload them, even select folders to share with other Dropbox users. And like I said, every time you change a folder in the Dropbox on your computer, the changes are uploaded to the server - so it is a sort of remote backup in that regards. And the bonus there, it even lets you revert to previous versions. So say you accidently change something in your resume and realize days later you shouldn’t have… no problem, just revert to a previous version. Even better, if you delete it… you can go back and restore.

But where Dropbox really shines is when you have it installed on multiple computers. When you install it on the second, third or sixtieth computer and link it to your account, any time you change a file on one of the computers, the rest pick up the changes automatically - immediately if they are online, or at the point they get online later.

Dropbox can tell you at a glance if your files are up-to-date or not in two ways - each folder and file icon changes to indicate the status of the file. When everything is in sync on the computer you are using, the icon will have a green checkmark on it. If there is a file that needs to be updated, or if a folder contains a file that needs to be updated, it it will have a blue indicator similar to a recycle logo. In the screenshot here, you can see that everything is up to date, except something in that CSS folder.

There is also a system tray icon that can take you to your Dropbox, take you to the website, and it also changes between the blue update icon and the green checkmark to let you know if your Dropbox is up to date.

There are more features, such as the ability to easily share photos online with others, but the one kicker I want to touch on is the ability to share folders with others. Before finding Dropbox, I had been looking for a good NAS setup to put in our office that would allow us to access files remotely. We have guys on job sites and other folks that could benefit from being able to access our forms and other things while out of the office. Dropbox has pretty much eliminated that need.

When you sign up, you get 10 invites to the beta testing that you can give to friends, so I used them on co-workers. Then I set up some folders to share with them… once they signed up and accepted the invite to the the folders, everything from those folders was copied to their computers. Now, our job supe can grab that report or form he needs from his own computer, our estimator can work on a bid from home, or I can put together proposals while having lunch at Panara. Any time these files are updated, everyone gets copied. This has the advantage over simple ‘remote access’ in that you maintain a local copy, so if you can’t get connected you can still work on a file. Then once you do connect, everyone gets updated.

And for me, no more worrying about fogetting my thumbdrive. Ok, it’s not totally obsolete, yet. Currently Dropbox is limited to 2gig, but even with all the blueprints in PDF we share for work, we’re less than half-full. Indications are, the 2gig option will remain free and there will be paid options for more storage needs.

There are other, similar systems out there, and I admit I haven’t tested them… but the ease of use with Dropbox, the seamless integration of it… sometimes you just get lucky and find just what you are looking for on the first try, and I think that’s happened here with Dropbox. Hit getdropbox.com and watch the video they have there for more info, and if you haven’t… sign up for the beta. If you have any need to be carrying files around, you should be using Dropbox.