Why I use Dropbox…and why you probably should too!

· by · in All Posts, How To, Product Review. ·

So what is “Dropbox” you may ask?  Well it’s one of those cloud services that is becoming so popular today.  According to their own website:  “Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring all your photos, docs, and videos anywhere. This means that any file you save to your Dropbox will automatically save to all your computers, phones and even the Dropbox website.”  What makes Dropbox so easy to use is how truly “cross-platform” it is.  It works on Windows, Mac, Android, IOS, and even Blackberry.  This may sound interesting to some of you but let’s discuss some real world ways which Dropbox can really benefit you!

Cell Phone Pics

The merging of cell phones and cameras means that people are taking more pictures than ever.  Where ever you may go you always have a camera with you to capture precious moments with a picture or even a video.  But what happens if you lose your phone?  Or it gets stolen?  Or drop it in water and damage it?  The list goes on and on…

Well with Dropbox you don’t have to worry.  Thanks to a recent update to their mobile platform you can automatically have any picture you take uploaded and backed up “in the cloud”.  But it’s not only backed up on the Dropbox website; it’s also saved on every computer you have Dropbox installed on.

File Sharing

Remember the days when in order to share pictures with someone you had to email them?  A single digital picture today can run anywhere from 3 – 20MB!  That may not sound like much but when you are talking about emailing 20MB attachments that can choke some email providers even today. But with Dropbox you simply put the photos or files into a folder that you want to share with someone and send them a link to that folder and you’re done.  No more size limits.  I’ve even used this at work occasionally when I needed to email a large document to a school who could not accept email attachments larger than 5MB.

Online Access

By having your important files backed up to the Dropbox website enables you to access those files from anywhere.  You can securely login and view your photos, listen to music, or edit documents from any computer with a web connection.  And any changes you make to those documents online will automatically be synced on all of your other computers and mobile devices.

So how do you get Dropbox?  It’s easy!  Just click on the link here and sign up for free.  You’ll automatically get 2GB of free online storage space.  That may not be enough space for you but you can either buy more space from Dropbox or you can get free space by referring your friends.  For every friend that signs up you get an extra 500MB for free!  Sign up 2 friends and you’ve increased your available space by 50%.  Keep doing this until you reach your referrral limit of 16GB.  I can wholeheartedly recommend Dropbox to anyone.  Have any questions?  Leave them in the comments below and I’ll try my best to answer them.

3 responses to “Why I use Dropbox…and why you probably should too!”

  1. Cloud based file sharing is gaining by leaps and bounds because of the mentioned reasons, and Dropbox is becoming a household name in this regard.

    One thing to be mindful of, however, if you are interested in file encryption/security. If file encryption is important to you, you will be interested to note that the way Dropbox handles encryption is to encrypt the files AFTER they have been uploaded, this means that you and Dropbox have the encryption key. To be truly secure, only you should have the ability to decrypt your files, but currently Dropbox will also have this ability. This may pose a potential security issue to some.

    An alternative to this is SpiderOak. It behaves similar to Dropbox, still gives you 2 GIGs free, same price structure, etc, but files are encrypted on your computer, first, AND THEN uploaded to SpiderOak’s servers. This ensures that you, and only you, have the ability to decrypt files you want encrypted.

    The Cloud is here to stay, but be careful before jumping in with both feet. Many of these issues have yet to be ironed out. Security and file encryption may not be very important to the masses, but for those that are interested in it, or require it for their job, want to be sure their files are fully secured.

  2. Pingback: sending pictures from phone to pc or flash drive - Android Forums·

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