Digital Cheat Sheet

Dropbox IconDropbox is an amazing little web service that allows you to sync your files from computer to computer and with the web. There are a lot of web services that do this very thing, but Dropbox stands above the rest in speed and overall reliability. The people at Dropbox really sat down, designed their program well, and their hard work really shows. The application you download is simple, it creates a small “Dropbox” folder on your computer and then sits in your menu bar (Taskbar for Windows users). The application itself is well written and has virtually no footprint that effects the performance of your system. I have felt no performance decreases on any of the machines I have put it on and the Dropbox client works exactly the same way on the Mac and Windows client. After you save a file to your Dropbox any time you modify it on any computer or the on the web interface Dropbox only syncs the changed data, not the entire document. 

Speaking of the web interface that is an equally important part of Dropbox. Not only do you have access to all of your file in your Dropbox, but you can pull back previous versions of any of your documents or recover deleted files. Anything you restore will be automatically synced back to you computer. The Dropbox interface uses web standards and can be accessed from virtually any computer, including those really outdated library computers your school uses. After it logs on the website you can upload and download any number of the files in your Dropbox. If you happen to upload a change, as long as the file name remains the same, Dropbox is smart enough to recognize the new version of a particular document most of the time and sync that across all of your computer instead of creating a separate file. You can also share files right from within the Dropbox web interface by selecting the share option and copying the sharing URL into a chat (cough, cough Facebook) or email. Dropbox is so amazing and reliable that I have started to stop bringing my files around with me on my USB key. I just make sure that files are saved in my Dropbox and then walk down to the library to print them. If you visit the Dropbox website on your iPod Touch or iPhone you are actually treated to a nice little web interface that allows you to view all of the files in your Dropbox. 

As for pricing Dropbox is free for the first 2GB and only $99 a year for 50GB. I do not know why would need it, but there is a 100GB option available too for $199 a year. Dropbox right now has a spread the word feature that allows you to earn extra storage if you get somebody else to sign up for Dropbox and install the program their computer. For every person you sign up you and that person get an extra 250MB of storage, which will max out at 5GB (I'm currently at 2.5GB myself). If you are interested you can check it out at www.getdropbox.com .

If you want to help me out a little and earn some extra storage yourself click my referral link here: https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTE1MzI0ODk . 

Rating: 4.75/5