What exactly is Drop Box, and how does it work?

1. 84

   oceansnsunsetsposted 12 years ago

   What exactly is Drop Box, and how does it work?
   
   I heard about Drop Box, for photo storage and video storage, but I know nothing about it.  Have you used it, and if so what are your thoughts?  Positive and negative comments appreciated. 
   
   Looking for a good way to store videos and photos possibly, if I end up with an Ipad.  I take a lot of both, and need a place where I can easily access privately held photos and videos on different sites on the net.

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2. 60

   iefox5posted 12 years ago

   Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily. I don't use Dropbox service myself but some of my friends do. However, you have no risk using the service.

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3. 75

   Big Brotherposted 12 years ago

   I use it and I have to say that is excellent - perfect idea if you want to have your ''stuff'' with you anywhere you want. I install it and then you don't have to connect your smart phone with your pc. It transfer all your photo and video automatically from your smartphone to your computer.
   
   Perfect for me and totally free of charge.

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4. 78

   derek gulbransonposted 12 years ago

   I have used DropBox for several years. It's basically a shared folder on your computer that syncs with the Dropbox servers. You can invite others to a folder and (if they accept the invite and install the Dropbox software on their computer) they will have a folder on their computer that mirrors the folder on your computer. Either of you can add, remove, change files in the folder and both of you will always have the latest versions of the files on each of your computers. Every time you save a file in the share folders it is uploaded in the background to the Dropbox servers.
   
   It also stores past versions of files, so if you accidentally remove or change a file that stored on DropBox, you can easily recover it using the Dropbox web interface.
   
   My only complaint is that there is no permissions control. You can share a folder or not, but you can't share a folder but not let people delete files. On the Mac (and probably Windows too) since your shared Dropbox folders are not actually "shared" folders from the OS perspective, when you drag files from your Dropbox folder it actually moves them instead of copying them. If you move them out a Dropbox folder then you have just deleted them from Dropbox. I've had to spend too much time undeleting files that someone accidentally deleted when they were trying to move them to their desktop.
   
   Box.net I've heard is similar and allows more fine-grained permissions control. Also Google just launched Google Drive a few months ago which is very similar to Dropbox.

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