Dropbox – A Solution to Many Problems
Remember when you were in school and you carried that big 3-ring binder with you from class to class and back and forth from home? It contained all your notes and the papers you were working on. Remember the panic you felt when you realized that you left it at home and all your homework for the day was stuck back on your desk at home. Or maybe you were the parent who got the frantic phone call to bring it to school.
Other than the occasional problem of not having the information with you, it was a pretty simple system. You didn’t have to worry about whether or not you had the latest version of a document and you didn’t have to worry about making the change on the copy you had at home and the copy you had at school.
Fast forward to today. All that data is electronic now. But, if you are like me, you work in several different places. I have a desktop, a laptop, a smart phone and an iPad and then there’s my husband’s laptop that lives in the family room. I store files on a home server that is wirelessly networked. That was my solution to keeping all my documents synced so I always had the latest version available to me. But when I wasn’t at home I had a problem. I tried various solutions to remotely log in to my desktop to access files on my server but that was expensive and slow. Then I tried using a portable USB drive but it quickly became a challenge to know which was the most recent version of a file and to be sure that when I made a correction on one file I made it on all the versions of that file.
And then the clouds parted, the sun shone through and (cue the angelic chorus) AHHHH! I found Dropbox.
No more questions about syncing! Dropbox allows you have a single copy of all your files which you can access from anywhere since it stores your files on line (or in the cloud). You open an account and download the software to your various devices and it creates a folder that acts just like another drive on your computer. You store files in Dropbox and every time you make a change it syncs up with all the your other devices. The files are always available from the secure Dropbox website so you can access them from any computer that has a internet connection. Once you have Dropbox installed on a computer you can access the files off-line and if you make changes they will be automatically synced across all devices the next time you go on line.
It’s easy to share information using Dropbox too. Simply invite friends, family or teammates to a folder and it will be as if you saved the folder to their computers. This is a great feature if you work with a VA. Dropbox will keep all the files synced so they will see your changes and you will see theirs. You can invite people to have access to only some folders. You can even put a file into a “public” folder and send a link to that specific file to anyone even if they don’t have a Dropbox account.
What about safety? One of my initial concerns was security. Dropbox uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and AES-256 bit encryption. (I’m not sure what all of that means but my security experts tell me that it is all good.) They also offer some security against “user error” — they keep a one-month history of your work and any changes can be undone and files can even be undeleted!
Sounds expensive – how much does it cost? This may be the best part of all! Dropbox has a FREE version with 2GB of storage. If you signup using this link: http://db.tt/voX0ckX you will get an extra 250 MB of bonus space and I will too. They have a premium account that is very affordable — $99/year will get you 50GB of space.
I’ve used it for sharing work files between my team members and our clients but I’ve also found some great uses in my family. I have a folder that we all share photos and my husband and I shared a folder when we planned our last vacation. I wish I’d had this resource when I was coordinating my PTA committees! How do you think Dropbox could simplify your life?
Comments
I love, love, love Dropbox. I swear by it now. It lets me store all files I’m working on for clients in one place that accessible from ANYWHERE.
Since I’m on the go so much, it’s imperative that I can get to my files from wherever I might be – on my phone, my computer, other computers, etc. It’s been a life saver in many circumstances. I’d recommend it to anyone.
My other go to is Evernote!
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