Sep 12
| As some of you may know I have quite a few computers that I use (at last count I had 1 x windows (desktop), 1 x windows (laptop), 1 x iMac, 1 x MacBook Pro and 1 x Asus eee running Linux). Depending on where I am I could be working on anyone of the machines at any time during the day. I quite often start working on a file on one machine before moving to another later in the day (i.e. start at work and finish at home). The hardest part of being mobile and migrating between computers like I do is making sure that each version of the file is kept upto date on all the machines. Obviously I could keep the files on a usb stick and just carry them around on that, but to be honest I don’t always remember to take my stick with me. Yesterday I posted about a free offer from File Savr a useful tool for transferring files to people. But that still relies onme remembering to upload the files before I leave. Late last night I got an email about a service I’ve been waiting to try for a while |
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Dropbox has been in private beta for a while now but yesterday I got an email telling me that it was open to the public. |
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The premise is quite simple. Dropbox has a piece of software that you install on each computer you want to sync files between. Its sits quietly out of the way once it’s installed other than an extra icon on your task list. The idea being that once you have installed it you can simply tell it which files to sync and it will then be uploaded to their servers and transfered to any machines running the same account. |
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| The thing I like about Dropbox is how easy it is to make a file for sync. Once the program is installed you get an extra folder on your list in Finder (or it’s Window’s/Linux compatriot). Any files you want to sync just need to be saved in this folder. Dropbox will then automatically upload this file for you. Once the file is uploaded it is marked with a tick box just to let you know. Now syncing files between machines is quite common, but something extra that Dropbox adds that I quite like is a version history, it keeps a track of changes you make to a file. Only the changes are uploaded to the server to be sent to your other machine. You can track any changes you make and even role them back. If you are on a machine that isnt one you normally use and it doesn’t have Drop box installed you can still access your file through a web interface, edit them and then re-upload them, keeping your changes tracked. I’ve been using it since yesterday afternoon and so far I’m quite impressed it seems to fit my needs quite well |
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Standard free acounts are limited to 2GB, but if you sign up before 11:59pm PST on Saturday you get entered for a draw with a chance of winning one of the 50GB accounts that they are giving away to encoutage people to sign up (100 to give away in total)
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Web Interface
Version Tracker
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September 22nd, 2008 at 9:29 pm
[...] to be able to access a program on your own computer. Previously I have touched on tools such as Dropbox that allow you to keep files synchronised between computers quite [...]