I often receive questions about where you can save your documents in the cloud (online). In the past I have written about Mesh.com and Google Docs. However, I have found another one which, I believe is even better. Over the past several months I have started to depend on Dropbox.com.
With Dropbox you get 2GB of free storage or more if you meet certain criteria. If you decide to sign up for Dropbox use this link, http://bit.ly/aszzao. If you use this link, they give me 250 MB of additional free storage, so thanks in advance. If you want more storage you can get 50 GB for $9.99/month or 100 GB for $19.99 per month.
First, let me supply some info about file sizes. I have stored all of my columns from the past nine years on Dropbox. That is about 750 columns and research documents. They take up about 50 MB. With the total of 2 GB of storage in Dropbox I could store another 40 years worth of columns. You could also store about 750 digital photos, depending on the resolution.
It is easy to use. Install the software and sign up with an email address and password. Then you will have a “My Dropbox” folder in your “My Documents” files. Any files or folders you put in that folder are automatically transferred to the Dropbox cloud. If you make a change to any file in that new folder it will automatically be updated to the cloud. Smooth… and it takes no extra input or thought from you.
In my case I moved my “Columns” folder into the newly created “My Dropbox” folder. After about three or four minutes all of those files were online. As I type this column today and save it, the new version is online almost instantly. By-the-way, as you try it keep in mind that the file will not be uploaded until you close it on your local computer.
That is not all it does for you. Let’s say you have a desktop, a notebook and a netbook computer. You can install Dropbox on all three systems. The entire contents of the “My Dropbox” folder will be duplicated on all three. That way your important files are always available a few seconds after you start your computer. If you only have one computer it is still a good thing since the files are safely backed up online in case your hard drive fails.
There is one last feature I will mention. If you have a file you want to share with an individual or a group of people go into Dropbox.com and share it with them using their email address.
If this sounds like something you could use why not give it a shot? I don’t think you will be disappointed.
