5 ms·

As an 8 year old child, I never understood what briefcases were but that didn't prevent me from having tons of them.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
I used win98 regularly back then. Never touched briefcases. I’m not sure it was too popular.
vel0city 6y ago
Briefcases were supposed to be a tool to easily sync a directory structure with removable storage or a spotty network connection. Say you've got a computer at home and a computer at the office. You do a bit of work on some files over the weekend with your files in your briefcase. When it is time to head to the office on Monday you pop in a floppy disk (or PDA, or some other removable storage) and sync your briefcase to it. Get into the office, pop your floppy into your work machine and re-sync your copy of the briefcase there. You don't have to remember which files potentially updated and you don't have to work off your removable media the entire time. It was a neat concept. I used to use that to sync stuff stored on my school's student network drive with a floppy (and later flash drive) with my home PC. They definitely didn't describe it well unless you went digging for why it exists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briefcase_(Microsoft_Windows) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briefcase_(Microsoft_Windows)
- asadlionpk 6y ago
  a floppy-based Dropbox.
  - vel0city 6y ago
    Exactly, right? Can't believe people fell for Dropbox when you could build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
    - asadlionpk 6y ago
      Ha! Reminds me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
      - vel0city 6y ago
        Oops, that's what I meant. Thanks!
    - lewiscollard 6y ago
      Please don't bring up this ancient comment any time file synchronising or Dropbox is mentioned. Doing so was not funny the first time and it's still not.

I used win98 regularly back then. Never touched briefcases. I’m not sure it was too popular.

Briefcases were supposed to be a tool to easily sync a directory structure with removable storage or a spotty network connection. Say you've got a computer at home and a computer at the office. You do a bit of work on some files over the weekend with your files in your briefcase. When it is time to head to the office on Monday you pop in a floppy disk (or PDA, or some other removable storage) and sync your briefcase to it. Get into the office, pop your floppy into your work machine and re-sync your copy of the briefcase there. You don't have to remember which files potentially updated and you don't have to work off your removable media the entire time. It was a neat concept. I used to use that to sync stuff stored on my school's student network drive with a floppy (and later flash drive) with my home PC. They definitely didn't describe it well unless you went digging for why it exists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briefcase_(Microsoft_Windows) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briefcase_(Microsoft_Windows)

asadlionpk 6y ago
a floppy-based Dropbox.
- vel0city 6y ago
  Exactly, right? Can't believe people fell for Dropbox when you could build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
  - asadlionpk 6y ago
    Ha! Reminds me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
    - vel0city 6y ago
      Oops, that's what I meant. Thanks!
  - lewiscollard 6y ago
    Please don't bring up this ancient comment any time file synchronising or Dropbox is mentioned. Doing so was not funny the first time and it's still not.