I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was getting impatient waiting for my Dropbox invite to arrive. Well I’m pleased to inform everyone that it has arrived! I was/am very excited, and have spent a fair bit of time today experimenting with it.
I’ll quickly go through what I think about it…
In short, it’s a really awesome system. It is fast, intuitive and it does its job very well. I have to congratulate the people behind it for making a really nice application which, though not yet totally polished or feature-complete, is already indispensable.
After install you can find a drop box sitting in your ‘My Documents’ folder. This is your portal to your online sync and storage system. Anything that you chuck into it is very elegantly sent to the Dropbox site and to any colleagues or friends who you have opted to share the data with.
The web interface is pretty good. I really, really like the ability to recall past revisions of a document. Did someone go and delete or mess up your content? No worries, Dropbox has a copy stored away online for you to revert to.
Right now the service is still in beta, but you get 10 invites to give away upon account approval.
So go request your own invite and hopefully yours will arrive a bit quicker than mine. I didn’t think that the reality could live up to the demo I watched ages ago, but it does a fantastic job of doing everything it said it does.
Tjobbe responded on 08 Jul 2008 at 8:46 am #
I received mine last week and immediately set it up on three computers. One where I am right now and the other two at home and like you say, it does it’s job fantastically.
Haven’t yet had to use the restore files feature but I’m sure I will. It would have been better actually if I had dropbox installed a week ago as I lost a whole folder of mockup web site designs which I was gutted about!
Now to get a really fast internet connection at my end and a much, much bigger file allowance from dropbox to really see the advantages, 2GB wont go very far, that’s smaller than most USB sticks.
Tjobbe’s last blog post..Site Creative Web Design re-design
Andrew responded on 08 Jul 2008 at 8:58 am #
Thanks for the comment Tjobbe. I agree completely, 2GB is going to get used up very fast (it already is with a few folders filled with images!).
Restoring files is useful but my biggest use has been sharing project folders with several people. I’ve found Dropbox to now be almost indispensable when collaborating on a project, it’s automatic and completely unobtrusive.
Shame about those mockup designs, it hurts losing all that work, doesn’t it?