Free Service Makes Thumbdrives Virtually Obsolete!

Do you use portable Flash drives, aka “Thumb” drives, very much?

If so, I wanted to pass along a helpful tip on a service I was recently introduced to that you might find helpful. It’s a “cloud-based service” called DropBox.

They have a free option where you get 2GB of file space. If you refer friends, like through the link here, and they register for any level of service and install their driver, you both get 250MB more storage.

Here’s why I like it.

See, I have three computers that I need to move files between. Two are Windows, one is a Mac.  DropBox has a driver you install that makes it look like a regular disk folder. The driver is available for Windows, OS X, and even Linux systems.

I frequently move EXE files (usually Windows setup files) between computers, like when I buy something or DL it on one machine and I want it on another, I’ll put it into my DropBox folder.

I was using Google Docs for a while.

Google Docs is really annoying in this respect, because EXE files — either alone or inside of ZIP files — get blocked most of the time by Google. It takes about a dozen tries to get it to cough up the file, even though there’s supposedly a link that says to DL it. That’s the most annoying thing to me about Google Docs — why it insists on keeping me from downloading files that I uploaded myself. I sometimes would get errors on other types of files as well.

Someone suggested I look at DropBox, and I’ve found I like it a LOT more.

The DropBox driver makes the files appear locally to each computer; in fact, it keeps them constantly in sync. If you have a team of people who are geographically distributed, it’s as if you’re all sharing the same virtual drive.

DropBox also maintains version histories of files. So if someone accidentally overwrites a file, you can get it back.

DropBox lets you access your files from anywhere through a web browser.

There’s a free version that’s quite useful. The paid version gives you a TON more space.

There are some other services like this, but I find that DropBox is a lot easier to use, given it’s installable drivers, automatic syncing, and version histories. I only wish they’d sell you their drivers and let you use your own server for file
storage.

I find I no longer need to use my thumb drives, except for really big files.

Check it out today!  DropBox

-David