So, this is a quick review, mostly because DropBox is getting Digged, TechCrunched and Redditted all at the same time — and I’m finally allowed to blog about it, as they’ve dropped their request they bloggers not do so. I’ve been in the private beta for almost two months now, and DropBox is pretty much as hyped: it is an awesome remote online “drive” solution.
While its features are not tremendously unique — you get gigabytes of storage, you can install a little program on your computer which auto-syncs so that a special folder “auto-syncs” with getdropbox, you can “share” different folders and files in a fairly granular fashion, and so on.
Rather, what really works for me is how simple and elegant it is.
{actually there is two other features that are also pretty nifty: how it keeps different versions of files every time they are changed, and its auto-gallery feature}
There are, in fact, many online solutions, but what sticks out about DropBox is that its interface is very clean, very fresh, very simple, and very fast. Unlike its competitors, the online interface isn’t trying to mimic your desktop, and as such, isn’t full of fancy AJAX (or Flash) tricks. It has a very simple interface, and its a joy to use.
This latter fact is important to me, because — and perhaps you’re like me — you bring data between computers of varying ages and processing speeds. AJAX and Flash are fine when you’ve got a relatively “new “machine, but in the places that I work (hospital), I’m often faced with old machines, or machines that have miniscule amounts of RAM, or computers that are just plain slow. Using other online storage solutions make no sense in this environment because they’re slow and cumbersome to use.
But this is where DropBox sails, as it requires very little of the host machine to work … which is just as it should be.
On the other hand, its not a perfect product by far. One thing about DropBox that needs work, for example, is the downloading interface. There is no easy way to download more than one file (if you’re at a remote machine and don’t want to install the remote “drive” on it), and obviously this is an important feature if DropBox is meant to be more than an archiving tool (which presupposes that you won’t be downloading much).
This feature can’t be all that difficult to implement, so I anticipate that its one of those things these guys are working on.
Bottom line: DropBox is pretty awesome and given its simple interface, very usable even in fairly primitive computing environments. I’ve been using it almost daily in the past two months, and its one of those services that goes above and beyond any superlatives that I’m going to use — and that you really just going to have to try for yourself.
