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Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)

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Re: Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)

#101

Post by beamatronic »

ByteJockey wrote: post #97
mullingitover wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then came "Google Drive" and nobody turned back to Dropbox after that. I wish it were true, but neither Google nor Apple have the most basic, brain-dead feature: "Give me a link that I can give anyone, and they can download the thing without jumping through any hoops." They both require people receiving a file to jump through the hoop of having accounts with them in order to do this most basic action. It's the reas…

I've defaulted to making s3 buckets public for that. Admittedly, the s3 console isn't the easiest thing to navigate if you aren't used to it, but I don't really need to do it very often.

Use Cyberduck or Filezilla instead?

Re: Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)

#102

Post by teknas »

miked85 wrote: post #84

I switched to Resilio (formerly BitTorrent) Sync [1] years ago and never looked back. It does have the restriction that at least one of your machines must be online to sync with others, but aside from that, it has been a solid replacement. [1] https://www.resilio.com/individuals/

If one of your devices is guaranteed to be always online, you should take a look at syncthing. I found it to be faster than resilio.

https://syncthing.net/

Re: Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)

#103

Post by paulie_a »

ativzzz wrote: post #25

Never understood Dropbox, because as a Linux user, you can already 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. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software. ... Not mine, but a HN classic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

I guess I could do all of that...or I could not. And utilize a far superior system without the effort and for a redicilously low price.

Re: Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)

#104

Post by davchana »

august125 wrote: post #85
wheels wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently uninstalled Dropbox after years of use. The upgrade nags were over the top, and the number-of-device limitations on the free plan made it no longer usable for me. I like the app, and would happily have paid something for it, but as a mostly private user, the lack of a plan between 2 GB / free and 2 TB / $10/month just didn't make sense. $3/month for 5 GB would have been an easy choice. Now I'm using SyncTh…

What really irritated me was the suddenly imposed three device sync limit. Being forced to pay for 2 TB when I didn't need any more space than I already had just to get my files on all my computers really rubbed me the wrong way. Like you, I wish there was a 5 GB / $3/month plan. On top of that, they're losing sight of the deep OS integration that made them so appealing to Steve Jobs. When a screenshot is automatical…

Although I never had more than 3 devices connected to Dropbox at sane time; but Dropbox Camera Upload used to rename all the photos to time & date it uploaded; I will have same photo with it's correct time n date took as name in my phone, & it's copy with a different name in Dropbox. I used other sync apps to connect & sync my Camera folder to Dropbox, like FolderSyncPro. Apps like that can connect from any number of devices.

Re: Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)

#105

Post by davchana »

Whinner wrote: post #63
daveoc64 wrote: post #22

I use Dropbox as a consumer only. I pay for the Dropbox Plus plan, and that does everything I want - albeit at a higher price than I'd like, but it always seems like their marketing is so heavily geared towards business use. Every time I go on the site I seem to get some hint that I should consider upgrading my entire team to some enterprise plan. I miss when it was just "buy a load of space online".

I’m at the same point too. My Dropbox personal expires in a week and I’m not going to renew for $120/year. They’ve really priced themselves way too high for me. I just need a 100-200gb for photo backups from my phone. With Amazon, Google and even MS offering better pricing I really have not reason to stay. MS in particular has great pricing. $99/year for 5 copies of Office and 1tb of storage. I can’t see the value of…

Amex is offering $40 credit in Dropbox; targeted offer.

Re: Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)

#106

Post by Stratoscope »

ImTheMaddest wrote: post #88
mullingitover wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then came "Google Drive" and nobody turned back to Dropbox after that. I wish it were true, but neither Google nor Apple have the most basic, brain-dead feature: "Give me a link that I can give anyone, and they can download the thing without jumping through any hoops." They both require people receiving a file to jump through the hoop of having accounts with them in order to do this most basic action. It's the reas…

Google Drive has this feature, right click the file > get shareable link > Anyone on the Internet with this link can view

OneDrive too, for either a file or a folder, with approximately the same UI (right click and select Share). Works on desktop, mobile, and web.

Re: Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)

#107

Post by Stratoscope »

_visgean wrote: post #73
ativzzz wrote: post #25

Never understood Dropbox, because as a Linux user, you can already 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. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software. ... Not mine, but a HN classic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

Somehow I am doubtful that you can trivially build what dropbox does. I am on their pro plan, I have tried running Syncthing on my own servers but the cost is quite prohibitive. I have about 300GB of photos there. Some of the files change, sometimes generating quite a lot of space - e.g. I think calculating the deleted files it is quite possible that I have few terabytes of data at any given moment. I looked into get…

Whenever someone quotes the old HN comment that GP linked, you can be sure that they are pointing out the absurdity of thinking you could "build such a system yourself quite trivially".

Re: Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)

#108

Post by thaumasiotes »

bane wrote: post #77

Dropbox sells one thing: easy to use drive space in the cloud. Dropbox failed to do one thing: give people compelling reasons to put a growing amount of stuff there so they would keep paying for and upgrading their accounts. Imagine these scenarios: - A user dumps their photos into dropbox and automatically is granted a flickr quality site with all of their photos there and organized. They can add metadata in the sit…

> Imagine these scenarios:

> A user dumps their music collection into dropbox and automatically get a private site they can use to listen to their collection. Now I have to keep paying for their service and upgrading to add new music. Dropbox could have taken on any number of music services.

Considering that Amazon offered this exact functionality, and decided it wasn't even worth maintaining, I don't think it's obvious that Dropbox missed something by not doing it at all.

Re: Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)

#109

Post by thaumasiotes »

_visgean wrote: post #73
ativzzz wrote: post #25

Never understood Dropbox, because as a Linux user, you can already 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. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software. ... Not mine, but a HN classic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

Somehow I am doubtful that you can trivially build what dropbox does. I am on their pro plan, I have tried running Syncthing on my own servers but the cost is quite prohibitive. I have about 300GB of photos there. Some of the files change, sometimes generating quite a lot of space - e.g. I think calculating the deleted files it is quite possible that I have few terabytes of data at any given moment. I looked into get…

> Can I guarantee the same level of safety as Dropbox does?

Isn't Dropbox infamous for deleting your files?

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