Dropbox: my favourite way to move files between computers

Originally published in GP magazine .

Written for GP magazine around 2009. This is the version I submitted - the published article may have been edited.

Do you take work home a lot and are you fed up of using memory sticks to transfer files? Do you use several computers but can never remember where you saved that important PowerPoint presentation? I have found several great solutions and the best is free and works across platforms!

I have been a .Mac (now called MobileMe) subscriber for a while and one of its nice features was a hard disk in the sky that you can save files to and access from any Mac you owned. Recently upgraded, you can access the files from any computer through a web browser, from a Windows PC and even from your iPhone. The downsides are it costs money, feels slow to me and is aimed at Mac users, for whom there are other benefits. Microsoft has a similar thing called Skydrive, which is for PC users only but is free as part of their Windows Live project.

I however prefer a great piece of software called Dropbox, which although still in beta form is very stable, fast and reliable, and is free for the basic version that gives you 2GB of online storage. You can pay for more, and in theory you can use it for off-site backups, but I mainly use it for transferring files. Dropbox works on Windows machines, Macs and apparently Linux boxes too. It installs a directory or folder on the local machine and in the background constantly syncs this with the version on the internet. You can install it on as many machines as you use. I regularly swap files between my Mac, my MacBook and my work PC.

It has some other nice features: a web interface for when you are in an internet café, a public folder that lets people upload and download files, and a special folder where pictures are automatically added to a slideshow viewable by either everyone or just friends with a password. You access it from a little icon in the menu bar which allows you to see how much space you have used, what files have changed recently and to open your folder.

As it is a small company you can read the creators’ blogs and newsfeeds about what they are working on, and they are obsessed by speed and performance, which really shows. It just works, simply and quickly. If only I had a 3G wireless card, I would never need to copy a file to my laptop again.