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I love Dropbox! Except everything that has nothing to do with syncing my files. That's just bloat to me. So I gave them a chance on this, scrolled to trough th

by neals 5y ago

I love Dropbox! Except everything that has nothing to do with syncing my files. That's just bloat to me. So I gave them a chance on this, scrolled to trough the page, but for the life of me could not figure out what it is that they're selling here. Also, as the messag was unclear, my other thought was that this might be third-party thing, since the style of the page (especially the header fonts) seem so much different from the dropbox that I know.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
It’s screen recording/presentation tooling. Looks like a https://loom.com https://loom.com competitor.
- olah_1 5y ago
  Tella is also a competitor: https://www.tella.tv/ https://www.tella.tv/
- xemoka 5y ago
  Wow, even the Dropbox Capture landing page looks almost like Loom's...
yunohn 5y ago
> Try Dropbox Capture, and get your message across with screenshots, GIFs, or simple videos recorded right on your screen. So you can clearly say what you mean without scheduling anything. This is at the top of the page for me. Seems pretty clear?
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  I usually assume an unrequested, auto-playing, rapid-moving video at the top of a page is one of those trashy video-as-hero-image things and scroll to get it away so I can actually pay attention to what's on the page.
  - yunohn 5y ago
    For me, it’s in plaintext, at the top of the page, for both mobile and desktop - not in an auto playing video. I get that hating on Dropbox’ diversification is a HN pastime, but please be rational and not emotional.
    - mkr-hn 5y ago
      No, thanks. I'm okay having a healthy balance of clear thought and normal human emotion. This has nothing to do with either. Why did you mention that? Quit derailing. The video is right next to the text. Now that I know there's text there, I could ad block the nuisance, but I'm not interested in the tool. Or continuing this conversation. Go have your unmanaged, unrecognized, denied emotions somewhere else.
      - yunohn 5y ago
        > but I'm not interested in the tool What are you doing in this post? HN guidelines are clear about fostering open, quality discussion. This is not a thread to rant about Dropbox just because you hate it.
        mkr-hn 5y ago
        I didn't rant about Dropbox.
royal_ts 5y ago
There's literally a GIF showing what it does
- kuschku 5y ago
  Where? There’s just an empty green box on firefox Turns out, it’s HEVC video in a Quicktime container... Who thought that’s a good idea?
- kubanczyk 5y ago
  It's not literally a gif and it is broken on Firefox. There is a webm which seems fine in itself, but a broken quicktime .mov shows right on top of it, hiding it.
- sorenjan 5y ago
  For some reason their video at the top doesn't show properly on Firefox on Windows. They have two versions, one .mov and one .webm. The .mov doesn't work for me while the .webm does, but that's the second video source so I guess it's not selected correctly. Maybe the .mov works fine on macs. https://aem.dropbox.com/cms/content/dam/dropbox/warp/en-us/capture/04_Capture_Record_DWG_1080x1080.webm https://aem.dropbox.com/cms/content/dam/dropbox/warp/en-us/c...
tyingq 5y ago
Think "Windows Snipping Tool", but can also do video and screen recording. You would paste the result into MS Teams, or Slack, etc.
hugocbp 5y ago
Same here. I love Dropbox, but more and more often I am completely quitting and closing the Dropbox client because it takes over the computer processing. I welcome all the new features they are developing, I just wish they would release a Dropbox Light client that didn't try to have those features or anything more than a sync utility. I miss the old menu-bar Dropbox that I never even noticed it was running...
- peakaboo 5y ago
  Sounds like my Linux Dropbox client. I never notice it whatsoever. In fact, this post made me check if it's still there and yup, it is, keeping my entire Code folder synced between computers.
bachmeier 5y ago
> everything that has nothing to do with syncing my files Dropbox feels more and more like Evernote all the time. I don't know what is the purpose of this product. To get people to pay $10/month for their storage service? I can get a family plan from Microsoft with 1 TB of storage for each of six people, plus their office apps, for $100/year. I can get 2 TB from Google or Apple for the same price as Dropbox, but they have lower price points too. Google and Apple storage are already on your device when you buy it. A Chromebook comes with Google Drive for 1 year for free. Rather than accepting reality, Dropbox appears to be stuck in 2012 where people think of them when they think of cloud storage, and they think that slapping additional features on top will make up for their pricing.
- jpalomaki 5y ago
  For me the point of Dropbox is sync that works so well that I can even manage development projects on the shared folder. In my experience the Microsoft syncing is not even close match. This is likely also problem for Dropbox. For heavy users their main costs must come from bandwidth and processing - not raw storage.
  - lttlrck 5y ago
    I use syncthing doing that across Linux, macOS and windows. It's fire and forget.
- peakaboo 5y ago
  Dropbox syncs anything you put on your file system across computers, the others don't.
silicon2401 5y ago
Dropbox really is great. I used them in college and it was always effective yet painless. Since then I've used google because it integrates so well with everything from youtube to google office, but it's file syncing just isn't that great. I've been meaning to move away from google for file backups; I think I'll check out dropbox again. Or does anybody have something recommend over dropbox and google?

by neals 5y ago

toomuchtodo 5y ago

It’s screen recording/presentation tooling. Looks like a https://loom.com https://loom.com competitor.

olah_1 5y ago
Tella is also a competitor: https://www.tella.tv/ https://www.tella.tv/
xemoka 5y ago
Wow, even the Dropbox Capture landing page looks almost like Loom's...

yunohn 5y ago

> Try Dropbox Capture, and get your message across with screenshots, GIFs, or simple videos recorded right on your screen. So you can clearly say what you mean without scheduling anything. This is at the top of the page for me. Seems pretty clear?

mkr-hn 5y ago
I usually assume an unrequested, auto-playing, rapid-moving video at the top of a page is one of those trashy video-as-hero-image things and scroll to get it away so I can actually pay attention to what's on the page.
- yunohn 5y ago
  For me, it’s in plaintext, at the top of the page, for both mobile and desktop - not in an auto playing video. I get that hating on Dropbox’ diversification is a HN pastime, but please be rational and not emotional.
  - mkr-hn 5y ago
    No, thanks. I'm okay having a healthy balance of clear thought and normal human emotion. This has nothing to do with either. Why did you mention that? Quit derailing. The video is right next to the text. Now that I know there's text there, I could ad block the nuisance, but I'm not interested in the tool. Or continuing this conversation. Go have your unmanaged, unrecognized, denied emotions somewhere else.
    - yunohn 5y ago
      > but I'm not interested in the tool What are you doing in this post? HN guidelines are clear about fostering open, quality discussion. This is not a thread to rant about Dropbox just because you hate it.
      - mkr-hn 5y ago
        I didn't rant about Dropbox.

royal_ts 5y ago

There's literally a GIF showing what it does

kuschku 5y ago
Where? There’s just an empty green box on firefox Turns out, it’s HEVC video in a Quicktime container... Who thought that’s a good idea?
kubanczyk 5y ago
It's not literally a gif and it is broken on Firefox. There is a webm which seems fine in itself, but a broken quicktime .mov shows right on top of it, hiding it.
sorenjan 5y ago
For some reason their video at the top doesn't show properly on Firefox on Windows. They have two versions, one .mov and one .webm. The .mov doesn't work for me while the .webm does, but that's the second video source so I guess it's not selected correctly. Maybe the .mov works fine on macs. https://aem.dropbox.com/cms/content/dam/dropbox/warp/en-us/capture/04_Capture_Record_DWG_1080x1080.webm https://aem.dropbox.com/cms/content/dam/dropbox/warp/en-us/c...

tyingq 5y ago

Think "Windows Snipping Tool", but can also do video and screen recording. You would paste the result into MS Teams, or Slack, etc.

hugocbp 5y ago

Same here. I love Dropbox, but more and more often I am completely quitting and closing the Dropbox client because it takes over the computer processing. I welcome all the new features they are developing, I just wish they would release a Dropbox Light client that didn't try to have those features or anything more than a sync utility. I miss the old menu-bar Dropbox that I never even noticed it was running...

peakaboo 5y ago
Sounds like my Linux Dropbox client. I never notice it whatsoever. In fact, this post made me check if it's still there and yup, it is, keeping my entire Code folder synced between computers.

bachmeier 5y ago

> everything that has nothing to do with syncing my files Dropbox feels more and more like Evernote all the time. I don't know what is the purpose of this product. To get people to pay $10/month for their storage service? I can get a family plan from Microsoft with 1 TB of storage for each of six people, plus their office apps, for $100/year. I can get 2 TB from Google or Apple for the same price as Dropbox, but they have lower price points too. Google and Apple storage are already on your device when you buy it. A Chromebook comes with Google Drive for 1 year for free. Rather than accepting reality, Dropbox appears to be stuck in 2012 where people think of them when they think of cloud storage, and they think that slapping additional features on top will make up for their pricing.

jpalomaki 5y ago
For me the point of Dropbox is sync that works so well that I can even manage development projects on the shared folder. In my experience the Microsoft syncing is not even close match. This is likely also problem for Dropbox. For heavy users their main costs must come from bandwidth and processing - not raw storage.
- lttlrck 5y ago
  I use syncthing doing that across Linux, macOS and windows. It's fire and forget.
peakaboo 5y ago
Dropbox syncs anything you put on your file system across computers, the others don't.

silicon2401 5y ago

Dropbox really is great. I used them in college and it was always effective yet painless. Since then I've used google because it integrates so well with everything from youtube to google office, but it's file syncing just isn't that great. I've been meaning to move away from google for file backups; I think I'll check out dropbox again. Or does anybody have something recommend over dropbox and google?