One and only reason I started using Dropbox was because of their desktop app. It was there, available for Linux, simple and easy to install. One click to create an account and I'am a happy user since then, since the beginning.
Dropbox is great.
One important factor for me is that they went beyond the call of duty on Linux. Dropbox itself had some Python scripts available that made it possible to install and run the application, even if you weren't running one of the major two desktops – or even no X11 at all. It was a bit hackish (stubs for non-present GUI libraries instead of a proper non-GUI daemon), but it got things running.
I learned about Dropbox exactly the way slide 28 shows - heard about it from random source, tested, felt happy and started forcing my friends to use it (ie. to coordinate work for university projects). And the funny thing about those "Dozens and dozens of cloud storage companies" that existed prior to Dropbox (as slides 6 and 7 tell)... personally I don't know anyone who knew about any of those companies. I didn't know any of them untill today and for years I was pretty sure that Dropbox guys were the first ones to get that idea (or at least to get it working). And they did a great job with it.
I too assumed they were just the first ones with the idea. I've come up with a thousand and one amazing ideas only to find out that they've already been done--I actually invented the internet... It's encouraging seeing an example like this where quality matters.
Hm. I guess it works for Enterprise etc, but not for small groups. I've got a high school club, 12 members. We use(d) Dropbox until we "ran out of space". Its $9.99/mo to "upgrade" and we ALL have to pay it.
So the business model (from our point of view) is: pay nothing until you're hooked, then its $1,400/year. Ouch! We have to find a different solution.
And what is that money paying for? Of course from Dropbox's point of view its "what the market will bear". But from the customer point of view?
They say its to "increase your space". But its MY disk drive, I already bought it. So that seems phoney right off.
Maybe for all the network transfer costs? Hm, we have 1Gb, to copy it all every week between all of our computers would annualize to a few dollars, not $1400.00.
I know they seem successful, but they're still leaving some folks out in the cold with this business model.
They keep a copy of all your data on their servers. Not just a copy, but the change history of every file so you can revert to previous revisions of individual files.
Ah. How unfortunate. So because they chose to change Dropbox into some repository/history thing, instead of just file-sharing, now they have to charge everybody.
Dropbox didn't change their business model to a "repository/history" type thing. It has been this way from the very beginning.
It sounds like you just didn't understand the original intent of Dropbox and were using it for a purpose that it is not entirely designed for.
Dropbox syncs all of your files with their servers. Lets say you have 2 computers with Dropbox installed and under the same account. You can add FileA to one of the Dropbox folders. It will sync that file with the server and then all Dropbox clients sync with the server. This is useful in that you could format both computers and lose all physical copies of FileA. However, as soon as you re-install Dropbox it will sync with the server again and download FileA from Dropbox.
It has always been a lightweight and easy to use cloud-backup solution. The collaboration and shared folders have been just sort of a bonus.
If you want to just keep several machines in sync without the middleman then you are going to need to look into other solutions. Something like rsynch might be a good option.
Dropbox's feature list calls out File Sync and File Sharing as the major features. Forgive me if I took that at face value.
"Sync Windows, Mac and Linux computers" sure sounds like what it says.
In fact the word "server" doesn't occur until the 18th bullet point. If this is a the major feature point, they need to talk pointedly with their marketing guy.
Don't be a twerp. Of course we know how to share. But our shared files amount to nearly 2Gb, using up Everybody's allocation. So if they for example had half a Gb, they are now required to "upgrade" too.
As for another solution - wouldn't a private github repository work for your needs? You could do this for $25 a month, and would do the same thing you're doing now, wouldn't it?
Using multiple accounts has been very unpleasant; I don't know if that has been fixed. As I said, we had to quit using Dropbox for the club. And many folks already used Dropbox for other things, so normally are logged into their own account.
The reason I don't recommend dropbox, is that it's not clear from the homepage how someone can send a big file with it.
I can watch a video or sign in to an account. Great, but the people I am recommending this to want to share a file: why is there no file upload widget on the homepage?
I don't know if Dropbox has a limit on file size, but whether or not they can do that, it's not their positioning. They're all about "sharing files", but to say "we let you share big files!" would be too narrow, and turn off or confuse more people than it would attract.
