Want to Sync Files Between Computers and Platforms?  Check Out Dropbox!

April 13th, 2009 at 9:24 AM - Columns and Opinions by John F. Braun

Product Link : Dropbox Beta

At some point in your computing experience, you may need to share data among multiple computers. Sure, you can use removable media like a CD or DVD, but this isn't very quick. You can use email for small documents, but email wasn't really made for exchanging large files. You can use the iDisk feature of MobileMe, but you may not want or need all of the other features this package offers, or want to pay the yearly fee. If only there was a service that offered file synchronization among multiple computer, and was free. Enter Dropbox.

DropBox Integrates with Your Operating System

Dropbox is a service that allows you to synchronize files among multiple computers, and even among multiple platforms. The software is currently available on Mac, Windows and Linux. Once you install the software, you'll see a new Dropbox folder on your desktop.

Dealing with Dropbox couldn't be easier. Any file that you drag into a Dropbox folder will be synchronized with your account on the Dropbox servers, and will appear on any other machine that has Dropbox and uses the same account. During synchronization, you'll see a spinning sync icon, when the synchronization is complete, a green checkmark appears on the file or folder.

If you choose to run the Dropbox software in the background, you can use it to view how much space you've used (you get 2GB free) and connect to your account via the Web interface. It will also notify you if any changes have been made to the contents of your Dropbox folder. One very useful feature is that you can share a folder among accounts, which is great for group collaboration. There's also a Photo feature, which will create Web albums for photos you place in your Photos folder.

As mentioned, Dropbox provides 2GB of storage for free. You can get a Pro account, which offers 50GB of storage, at US$9.99/month or $99/year. There's also a referral program, where both you and a person you refer get 250MB of additional space, up to 3GB.

So make your file sharing life easier, and give Dropbox a try today! Have any other gadgets that help you work with others? Send an email to John and he'll check it out.

John is a software engineer who works in the corporate R&D group of a Fortune 500 company, focusing on imaging and printing technologies. He has AS, BS and MS degrees in various computing disciplines, so his friends and colleagues are somewhat surprised that he’s a Mac enthusiast.  After spending the day developing in an environment comprised largely of PCs, and watching colleagues wrestle with the horror that is Windows, he’s glad to come home to a MacBook Pro and PowerMac G5 at the end of the day.