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New Dropbox Pro plans

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: New Dropbox Pro plans

#41

Post by mootothemax »

luser001 wrote: post #36
mootothemax wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think their costs are unreasonably low.

Fair enough. For me, though, there are so many possibilities for things going wrong when it comes to storage, I'd rather not trust it to a company trying to squeeze a profit from taking in a few dollars a month - and that's before processing costs.

Also, why would I go for the cheapest option when I get so much greatness for the equivalent of buying a few coffees/beers? It's not mega money by the majority of people's standards.

Re: New Dropbox Pro plans

#42

Post by ErikHuisman »

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?

Volume discounts and long term contracts will bring the price down.

Re: New Dropbox Pro plans

#43

Post by noarchy »

radicalbyte wrote: post #29
mirkules wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you're a Windows user, then I'd recommend using TrueCrypt ( http://www.truecrypt.org/ ) to encrypt all of your files. Then put the TrueCrypt file in your Dropbox folder.

I have to throw in that TrueCrypt runs quite well on Linux and Mac OS, too.

Re: New Dropbox Pro plans

#44

Post by krschultz »

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?

It's probably the utilization rate.

The average person on the 50GB Dropbox tier might only actually have 25GB of stuff. Now they're on the 100GB tier, but they still only have 25GB of stuff.

Re: New Dropbox Pro plans

#45

Post by bossfo »

cletus wrote: post #8

I really wish there was a plan between free and 50G (now 100G). Kudos foe the increased storage though. Not having the pricing page live yet is kinda weird.

> I really wish there was a plan between free and 50G (now 100G).

Agreed. For those of us who use less storage (and especially 30 GB or less), Google Drive is clearly the better deal. Although others seem to have experienced problems with Google Drive, it has worked essentially flawlessly for me and, because of that, I plan to let my Dropbox subscription expire.

For every person who wants to keep 100 GB of data synched, I bet there are at least five who want to synch 30 GB or less.

Re: New Dropbox Pro plans

#46

Post by juriga »

rdl wrote: post #6
gte910h wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard Google Drive best described as "Dropbox for those whom time is free".

I haven't had any problems with it yet (as a single user); I have had weird problems with dropbox when shared with lots of users actively editing files (conferences). Not really apples to apples comparison, true.

I briefly considered switching to Google Drive when it was released. I copied all the files in my Dropbox (57GB) to the GDrive folder and waited for everything to sync.

After syncing, the GDrive client constantly used almost 500MB (yes, 0.5GB) of memory while Dropbox was always under 50MB (Windows 7)[1]. That's a huge deal for a program that's supposed to be always running.

Also, the GDrive client often crashed while syncing and had problems syncing some weirdly named files that Dropbox handled perfectly.

I hope GDrive gets over these issues soon, since they have some cool features (e.g. webapp integration, content-based image indexing).

[1] https://twitter.com/jtuulos/status/211702650109046785

Re: New Dropbox Pro plans

#47

Post by euroclydon »

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…

Please don't trust Dropbox as a journaled backup solution.

I powered up a virtual machine that had been down for a while and had dropbox installed. I tried to SSH in. My password kept being rejected. I verified my key through the console, and then it dawned on me that the VM's clock was off, and that's why SSL didn't work. So I set the clock. I think I set it a couple seconds into the future.

Fast forward a couple of days and I tried to open a project on another computer, but half the files were missing. What gives? I logged into the Dropbox web interface and saw that three days ago, "2311 files were deleted"!!! That's individual files from all over dropbox. How do I restore them??? Luckily I had a local hard drive backup and got most of my stuff, but it was hell to merge.

Did I screw up? Maybe, but I came to realize that that little blue box running in my task bar which has permission to delete my important files whenever it's algorithm thinks it needs to scares the hell out of me.

Re: New Dropbox Pro plans

#48

Post by FrojoS »

cletus wrote: post #8

I really wish there was a plan between free and 50G (now 100G). Kudos foe the increased storage though. Not having the pricing page live yet is kinda weird.

So do I, and I think 99% of all Dropbox users at some point. Why then, don't they do it?

I think, its because this makes getting "free additional space" so very attractive. You envite lots of friends and colleges in order to grow to a few GB [1]. I would guess this is one of the biggest reasons for Dropbox's success.

[1] For instance, I have 8.4 GB by now, without cheating. This more or less meets my needs.

Re: New Dropbox Pro plans

#49

Post by wavephorm »

krschultz wrote: post #44
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?

It's probably the utilization rate. The average person on the 50GB Dropbox tier might only actually have 25GB of stuff. Now they're on the 100GB tier, but they still only have 25GB of stuff.

This is almost certainly why they also don't offer smaller paid accounts (like 10-20GB) -- they know users of such tiers will probably keep their accounts maxed out. I know I almost always utilize nearly 100% of my 2GB free account, and I'd probably do the same with 10GB.

Re: New Dropbox Pro plans

#50

Post by philwelch »

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?

Aside from de-duping and underutilization, Dropbox might get better rates from S3 than the rest of us.
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