Dropbox: What a great service to sync and share files

For the last 10 years I have used Windows Remote Desktop to access my office computer whenever I was working from home or traveling.  This worked great but had some drawbacks such as on the day my office computer died and I was unable to “remote in” thus leaving me unable to work.  I decided to give file syncing a try once more and found that Dropbox was the solution.

I now have all our company files instantly synced onto our office network server (for everyone to use when at the office), on my home computer (for working at home) and on my laptop (for when I’m traveling).  I have everything I need to be productive wherever I am regardless of whether I have high-speed internet or am tethered to my iPhone. 

Working on the actual computer I’m using (instead of remotely) is also way quicker than via Remote Desktop.  I can use Photoshop (which is virtually impossible over Remote Desktop) and I can use multiple monitors (which is also impossible over Remote Desktop).

Dropbox is free if you have only a few gigs of data to sync, and is fairly inexpensive if you have 100’s of gigs.  We’re using the 100GB plan and that should be good for a while.

It’s also really easy to setup.  Just create an account, install the software on each of the computers that you want the files synced on, choose what folders to sync and you’re done.  When you update a file on any of the computers, Dropbox will update the other computers usually within seconds.

Dropbox also makes sharing files with other people very simple, we use this all the time when providing larger files to clients.

If you work from multiple computers and want to have your files easily available amongst them, or simply want an online backup of your data… give Dropbox a try.

Posted by Robert