New Dropbox Pro plans • Hacker News Board

Re: New Dropbox Pro plans

#31

Post by brian_cloutier » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 4:55 PM UTC

edanm wrote: post #5

I had really hoped this would happen in response to competitors like Google Drive. Now it's hear and I can only say: YAAAY!! I'll repeat it, for the billionth time: Dropbox is one of the companies that has drastically changed computing for me over the last few years. I absolutely adore it, and I simply cannot understand the many people who do not use Dropbox to host everything. All of my important, non-computer-speci…

> in short, everything I care about is in Dropbox.

That statement should be one of embarrassment, not of triumph. You're only one disaster short of an angry "everything I cared about was in Drop box and now its all gone" blog post. Please, look into backing your data up. The cloud doesn't make the need for backups disappear, it only makes you feel better about not having any.

Re: New Dropbox Pro plans

#32

Post by statictype » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 4:55 PM UTC

If I'm calculating this correctly, S3 costs about $12.50 per 100GB per month (and that's not including any http requests you make).

How is Dropbox (I assume they store data in S3) offering a lower price than that?

I know they de-dupe data but is there enough common data being stored for them to be able to charge so little?

Re: New Dropbox Pro plans

#33

Post by aresant » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 4:56 PM UTC

mirkules wrote: post #25

edanm wrote: post #5

I had really hoped this would happen in response to competitors like Google Drive. Now it's hear and I can only say: YAAAY!! I'll repeat it, for the billionth time: Dropbox is one of the companies that has drastically changed computing for me over the last few years. I absolutely adore it, and I simply cannot understand the many people who do not use Dropbox to host everything. All of my important, non-computer-speci…

There are many reasons not to use Dropbox: 1. Sensitive/Confidential info - I would never feel comfortable storing any kind of documentation on a 3rd party server that is sensitive to me like mortgage docs, tax docs or receipts. 2. Many companies have a strict policy disallowing use of Dropbox because it would leak information. On a personal level, any kind of work that I don't want to share with others (this include…

Regarding sensitive / confidential info, why not set up a volume with TrueCrypt that you can just mount when needed for sensitive stuff?

Re: New Dropbox Pro plans

#34

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 4:56 PM UTC

parfe wrote: post #7

Why would you announce new prices prior to the new price page launching? I immediately went to see the new pricing options only to be met with the same old prices. They squandered my click-through this blog post earned.

[deleted]

Re: New Dropbox Pro plans

#35

Post by edanm » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 4:57 PM UTC

luser001 wrote: post #17

edanm wrote: post #5

I had really hoped this would happen in response to competitors like Google Drive. Now it's hear and I can only say: YAAAY!! I'll repeat it, for the billionth time: Dropbox is one of the companies that has drastically changed computing for me over the last few years. I absolutely adore it, and I simply cannot understand the many people who do not use Dropbox to host everything. All of my important, non-computer-speci…

Serious question: why not use Backblaze to backup your important things? Dropbox is primarily a sharing and synchronization tool: using it for backup is very expensive. IMHO. YMMV. Edit: They now match Spideroak's pricing. If anybody from Spideroak is reading this: you have an awesome service, but here are a couple of things you might want to do. I like your commitment to privacy and hence use it, but sadly, IMHO it'…

(Op here)

Basically what others have said - I want things Synced, not just backed up. I like being able to access all my things on iPhone, on other computers, etc, and with it always working.

Also, I used Dropbox first, Dropbox "opened this market" for me, so to speak, which means I wasn't even thinking that this kind of thing would be convenient before I installed Dropbox and started using it. It's very possible that there are better services which I don't bother looking at because I'm with Dropbox.

Re: New Dropbox Pro plans

#36

Post by luser001 » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 4:57 PM UTC

mootothemax wrote: post #21

luser001 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: why not use Backblaze to backup your important things? Dropbox is primarily a sharing and synchronization tool: using it for backup is very expensive. IMHO. YMMV. Edit: They now match Spideroak's pricing. If anybody from Spideroak is reading this: you have an awesome service, but here are a couple of things you might want to do. I like your commitment to privacy and hence use it, but sadly, IMHO it'…

Serious question: why not use Backblaze to backup your important things? Because their homepage says: As low as $3.96/month per computer for unlimited data . I consider that to be an unmaintainable low price, and their "unlimited data" claim really puts me off. My files are too important to me; I couldn't even consider going with them. DropBox certainly costs more but: 1) I trust them (knowing that they use Amazon S3…

In case you didn't know they invented the "Backblaze Pod" to reduce storage costs.

I don't think their costs are unreasonably low.

1 TB of double-redundant bare HDD space costs about $250 for five years (they have an interesting blog post where they candidly admit that they buy high-warranty drives and the manuf's eat the loss of drives).

Even if you manage to upload 1 TB to their servers, they still don't lose money. Just to be clear, imho 1 TB is an insane amount of data. My pictures and videos from about 3 years still total only about 100 GB.

Given the slow upstream bandwidth of most users, most people are unlikely to upload anywhere close to 1 TB.

Re: New Dropbox Pro plans

#37

Post by acoyfellow » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 4:57 PM UTC

statictype wrote: post #32

If I'm calculating this correctly, S3 costs about $12.50 per 100GB per month (and that's not including any http requests you make). How is Dropbox (I assume they store data in S3) offering a lower price than that? I know they de-dupe data but is there enough common data being stored for them to be able to charge so little?

I'd be very interested in hearing more S3/Dropbox comparisons..

Re: New Dropbox Pro plans

#38

Post by dchuk » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 4:58 PM UTC

statictype wrote: post #32

If I'm calculating this correctly, S3 costs about $12.50 per 100GB per month (and that's not including any http requests you make). How is Dropbox (I assume they store data in S3) offering a lower price than that? I know they de-dupe data but is there enough common data being stored for them to be able to charge so little?

I pay for a 50gb account but use about 5% of it. I would imagine the vast majority of their users don't use anywhere near the full storage amount.

Re: New Dropbox Pro plans

#39

Post by edanm » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 4:59 PM UTC

brian_cloutier wrote: post #31

edanm wrote: post #5

I had really hoped this would happen in response to competitors like Google Drive. Now it's hear and I can only say: YAAAY!! I'll repeat it, for the billionth time: Dropbox is one of the companies that has drastically changed computing for me over the last few years. I absolutely adore it, and I simply cannot understand the many people who do not use Dropbox to host everything. All of my important, non-computer-speci…

> in short, everything I care about is in Dropbox. That statement should be one of embarrassment, not of triumph. You're only one disaster short of an angry "everything I cared about was in Drop box and now its all gone" blog post. Please, look into backing your data up. The cloud doesn't make the need for backups disappear, it only makes you feel better about not having any.

Well, technically, everything is auto-synced using Dropbox to 2 computers at all times, so I do have a backup.

Unfortunately for my peace-of-mind, if Dropbox ever decided to go wonky and delete all my files, it could do so from both my computers at the same time without me being able to stop it in time.

Not too worried about this, but it is something I think about once in a while. I do occasionally do a complete backup to a hard-disk, but only very occasionally.

Re: New Dropbox Pro plans

#40

Post by gurkendoktor » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 5:00 PM UTC

mirkules wrote: post #25

edanm wrote: post #5

I had really hoped this would happen in response to competitors like Google Drive. Now it's hear and I can only say: YAAAY!! I'll repeat it, for the billionth time: Dropbox is one of the companies that has drastically changed computing for me over the last few years. I absolutely adore it, and I simply cannot understand the many people who do not use Dropbox to host everything. All of my important, non-computer-speci…

There are many reasons not to use Dropbox: 1. Sensitive/Confidential info - I would never feel comfortable storing any kind of documentation on a 3rd party server that is sensitive to me like mortgage docs, tax docs or receipts. 2. Many companies have a strict policy disallowing use of Dropbox because it would leak information. On a personal level, any kind of work that I don't want to share with others (this include…

This defeats some of the uses of Dropbox, but 1.+2. can be worked around with EncFS. I am using http://www.boxprotect.com/ as a frontend, but I will try to replace it by directly using EncFS soon. I already do the latter on Windows.

I still get some of the benefits like having everything everywhere, even when I'm offline, and LAN computer-to-computer sync.