Dropbox: What Was Life Like Before I Had It?

When I look at all of the apps and online services I use (not counting search engines like Google or email services like Gmail), the one I can least imagine living without is Dropbox.  The issue here has to do with moving computer files from one computer to another.  I seem to recall that I used to use things like USB flash drives.  Yes, I have a pile of those gathering dust in my home office drawer, and I carry one around every day in my computer bag "just in case".  Before that, I think there were things like floppy disks, but I'm getting less sure as the years go by.

Yes, I could move files from one computer to another using email, but that requires some extra effort, and then I'd have to wait while things uploaded and then downloaded.  Not very efficient, eh?

So along comes Dropbox.  If you already use it, you probably can skip this posting, because you're already convinced that it's an amazing thing.  If you're not yet using it, keep reading.

OK, so I have a desktop computer at work (it happens to be a Macintosh, but this would all work just as well if it were a Windows machine, or even one running Linux).  And I have a desktop computer at home (it also happens to be a Macintosh, but again, not important in regards to Dropbox).  And I have an iPad, and I have an iPhone (but this would all work just as well if my mobile devices were running Android or the BlackBerry OS).

On the mobile devices, Dropbox installs like any typical app, while on your Windows or Mac OS X or Linux devices, Dropbox installs a folder on your system (called "Dropbox" on my Macs).  Yes, for some of you, installing software at work might be tricky, depending on your administrator privileges or how accommodating your IT staff are.

The point is, this all works much more easily if you can have Dropbox installed on your work computer.  If you can't, you can still use some features of Dropbox, because Dropbox is also an online service, and you can always login to your Dropbox account on their website and upload and download your files from it.  But personally I only need to use this feature when I'm on somebody else's computer (or on a public computer), when I need access to one of my files or when I want to save something into one of my directories.

Once you've created a free Dropbox account and installed Dropbox on the various devices you own (or that you exclusively use, such as the one at work), you'll be able to put into it any files that you want available on all of your devices.  In other words, Dropbox automatically synchronizes between your current device and your online account, and when you move to another of your devices, Dropbox checks to see if it needs to update the files on that device to keep it in sync.  This also means that you've got a form of automatic backup going on for the files you're regularly using.

Again, free.  For up to 2 gigabytes worth of stuff.  There's more to say about Dropbox, but I'll save that for my next posting, and besides, I've already said enough that you should be convinced that this is one very useful tech service.