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At first I thought "Well, Dropbox storage is 5x as expensive as hard drive space, so what's the point?". What I didn't see was the team use case: It's actually
by dkyc 10y ago
At first I thought "Well, Dropbox storage is 5x as expensive as hard drive space, so what's the point?". What I didn't see was the team use case: It's actually brilliant to have access to every document of all of my colleagues at all times, without saving all that stuff locally, or taking forever sync. This is really amazing.
The problem with our current shared team folders is that you need to make a deliberate effort to share something with the team. That means when you want to pull information from the shared space, you're very likely to get an outdated copy. Thanks to 1.) no storage constraints and 2.) deep OS-integration, all files can actually be always up-to-date with Dropbox Infinite. That really sounds cool.
- padiyar83 10y ago> ..or taking forever sync. This is really amazing. I don't think this solves the problem of taking forever to sync. Nothing has changed there. You are still bound by the same data retrieval and network latencies to get the file stored in a datacenter somewhere to you. That one is a harder problem to crack because it needs a lot of infra investment in expanding your content delivery footprint and replace SSD's with something much faster, like flash.
- Mtinie 10y agoThis solves an important aspect of the sync problem -- the ability to selectively sync individual files without having to sync the whole directory that it is part of (or even to have to know what the directory is in advance).
- tedmiston 10y agoDropbox has actually had Selective Sync for years. The whole part about the metadata being cached locally and a seamless experience at file system level is new though. https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/4456 https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/4456
- roel_v 10y agoFor people working in an office, you could have a spare machine with a full copy of the whole Dropbox; then LAN sync makes updating a lot faster. I already do this because I have to change my selective sync set quite often.
- dagw 10y agoDropbox storage is 5x as expensive as hard drive space, so what's the point? Yes and no. I have about 80 GB in my dropbox. This is no problem on my two workstations or my big laptop. Unfortunately my Macbook Air has a 128 GB drive. That means I keep having to exclude and include folders to be synced to my laptop or it will run out of space. That is a pain in the ass I would love to avoid.