I am madly in love with Dropbox. There are, of course, many fans of Dropbox out there but I did not know of this software till recently. I don’t know how I could have lived without it previously (call me ignorant…).
The reason is because I have heard of all these “in cloud” file sharing stuff. I have tried http://drop.io (and Microsoft Live Mesh or something like that) but I used it mainly to share files with my buddies and friends. As a result, I always assumed they are for sharing files with friends or even with strangers (aka sharing movies, ebooks, MP3 :p).
I never thought of the possibility of sharing files with MYSELF (call me stupid too).
One day, while surfing around, I saw the release of the free app, Dropbox, in the App store and decided to try it.
I am absolutely hooked after that.
You create a FREE Dropbox account that entitled you to 2GB of data. You can increase it by getting your friends to join or you can just pay a monthly premium for more storage space such as 50GB or 100GB.
After you created your account, you will need to install the Dropbox software in all your PCs (or Macs) to be really useful. Once you have installed the software in one computer, you should then install it in other computers you have. And also your iPhone. It is cross platform (i.e. works on Windows, Linux and Mac… you can imagine, hence, for me to share files with my Windows 7 PC and iMac etc).
I have dropbox installed in my home PC, my work laptop, my Windows netbook and finally my iPhone (and in November, I hoped my 27″ iMac too)…
Dropbox behaves like a normal Windows directory in my Windows 7 desktop. You can just click on the icon on the desktop to go to the files stored in the “cloud (aka your Dropbox account)” or just save files to your Dropbox account directly. For example, in Windows 7, it is in my favourites so that I can just save files quickly to the Dropbox.
Once you uploaded or changed a file in the Dropbox account, it is automatically available to the rest of your “clients” (i.e. the rest of the PCs or iPhone or Macs you have installed). This makes it a great quick way of sharing files with yourself. Of course, there are folders that you can use to share files with the PUBLIC (anyone) or create a shared folder for selected people you can invite by email (e.g. your share trading buddies or your girly-pictures sharing friends.. kidding).
For the iPhone, it is a great way of getting information you otherwise might find it useful on the move. You get the exact same data in your Windows Desktop as you will get in your iPhone:
Most important to me is that all the viewers are already in place. That means you can read a TEXT file, a PDF file and Microsoft Office files without the SOFTWARE installed in your iPhone:
Example: PDF
Example: MICROSOFT EXCEL 2007
Example: Text files which are great for quick notes
Example: JPG files
Also, you can use the Camera function in iPhone to take a photo and quickly upload to the Dropbox folder for your family or friends to share via the SHARED FOLDER etc.
Here’s some ideas for using your dropbox for YOURSELF:
(1) Place the password data file for a good password manager (e.g. KeePass) and you can have your passwords everywhere safely among all your PCs or Macs
(2) Place your financial data file for Microsoft Money or Quicken 2010 and you can update your expenses or credit card charges everywhere or just your expense tracking spreadsheet. Or your monthly budget spreadsheet.
(3) A friend of mine put his MT4 (a very important Forex Trading software) templates, trading indicators etc into his Dropbox and he can copy them around for every PC he used for trading
(4) Shopping lists so that you can refer to it in your iPhone when you go to Sim Lim Square 🙂
(5) Web sites you want to visit later at night in your home PC when you are NOT VERY convenient to do so during office hours in your office PC :p
The possibilities are endless.
Get your free 2GB account now.
Remember. It is useless to just sign up. You should also install the DROPBOX software on all your PCs.
