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Dropbox is in your Office

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#121

Post by swartkrans »

skrebbel wrote: post #112

As an Office customer and a Dropbox customer, I can't help but have mixed feelings. Office already has "direct" OneDrive integration and it's pretty useless, how could it be any better on Dropbox? The whole thing about Dropbox is that just works . Files are files, folders are folders, if I move them about they move, etc. The only problem with Dropbox and Office is how Office locks the files so they're only synced aft…

Well fortunately there are no changes happening to how it already works. It's just added features if you want them, if you don't then don't use them.

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#122

Post by swartkrans »

dfrey wrote: post #118
skrebbel wrote: post #112

As an Office customer and a Dropbox customer, I can't help but have mixed feelings. Office already has "direct" OneDrive integration and it's pretty useless, how could it be any better on Dropbox? The whole thing about Dropbox is that just works . Files are files, folders are folders, if I move them about they move, etc. The only problem with Dropbox and Office is how Office locks the files so they're only synced aft…

> I can understand how with iOS's "no files" design, this is the only way forward, but on desktop? Please let it stop. Apparently mobile is the future and the desktop experience must be crippled to unify it with the mobile experience. Personally, I don't understand how anyone gets real work done on tablets and phones. Sure there are some pretty silos, but trying to move data between silos is usually a nightmare.

> and the desktop experience must be crippled to unify it

Windows crippled their desktop experience for Windows 8 and 8.1 and are reversing it in Windows 10. No other operating system crippled their system in this way. So must is an unwarranted intensifier. Mistakes were made, things were learned, what you're saying isn't true.

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#123

Post by microtonal »

icelancer wrote: post #85
skizm wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does google drive have syncing folders on all systems like dropbox where I can just drag and drop? windows, mac, linux, android, ios? I actually don't know, not being sarcastic or anything.

They do. I think this is a fair question because it's not very well popularized. But it works great.

Google Drive has no Linux client. There are only unofficial clients.

Also, on my Macs Google Drive regularly crashes and is not able to upload some files (usually retrying works). With Dropbox I never had such problems.

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#124

Post by swartkrans »

nathantotten wrote: post #55
simonh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try that line on Bill Gates in his prime.

Things are different around here. Teams are expected to deliver great products on their own, not rely on some artificial lock-in to force adoption. You see this all over - we offer Linux on Azure, you can federate AD with Google Apps, we release dozens of apps for iOS and Android, and we are opening up many many APIs for rich integration. (Opinion my own obviously).

I liked your comment and voted you up but Microsoft's Linux on Azure is really weird. It's obvious there's a windows thing somewhere up in the higher levels because of the way certs are done and ports are used. It's all very non-linuxy. If Microsoft is going to do something with linux they should do it right.

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#125

Post by microtonal »

VLM wrote: post #79
lentil_soup wrote: post #68

I stopped using Dropbox after the whole Condoleezza Rice thing and have been using a mix of Google Drive and OneDrive and I must say I like them a lot better. They do the same (and more if you use other Google Apps) and prices are cheaper. Are there any benefits to using Dropbox? Are there any other real alternatives you could recommend to give them a try?.

To the best of my knowledge, the only provider listed above with an official linux client is Dropbox. It works for me. Google Drive has a very unofficial yet supposedly usable 3rd party client at http://www.lbreda.com/grive/

Unfortunately, development seems to have stalled:

https://github.com/Grive/grive

There is also a FUSE client written in OCaml:

https://github.com/astrada/google-drive-ocamlfuse

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#126

Post by Periodic »

dfrey wrote: post #118
skrebbel wrote: post #112

As an Office customer and a Dropbox customer, I can't help but have mixed feelings. Office already has "direct" OneDrive integration and it's pretty useless, how could it be any better on Dropbox? The whole thing about Dropbox is that just works . Files are files, folders are folders, if I move them about they move, etc. The only problem with Dropbox and Office is how Office locks the files so they're only synced aft…

> I can understand how with iOS's "no files" design, this is the only way forward, but on desktop? Please let it stop. Apparently mobile is the future and the desktop experience must be crippled to unify it with the mobile experience. Personally, I don't understand how anyone gets real work done on tablets and phones. Sure there are some pretty silos, but trying to move data between silos is usually a nightmare.

What I think is the future for workstations and laptops is a web-integrated OS. Take Chrome OS as an example. These devices become more and more powerful as more and more of our data moves into the cloud.

I don't think anyone actually reviews, comments on or edits large documents on a tablet. That would be a nightmare. The most I've found bearable when reviewing papers on a tablet is highlighting. On a laptop you have the power of a full keyboard, which I can use to comfortably compose this comment, yet my laptop has almost no internal storage and all my documents are stored on the cloud.

This move is important for maintaining relevant, but I do think the insistence on tablets and phones is missing the whole of point of us making the data mobile.

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#127

Post by vlunkr »

dfrey wrote: post #118
skrebbel wrote: post #112

As an Office customer and a Dropbox customer, I can't help but have mixed feelings. Office already has "direct" OneDrive integration and it's pretty useless, how could it be any better on Dropbox? The whole thing about Dropbox is that just works . Files are files, folders are folders, if I move them about they move, etc. The only problem with Dropbox and Office is how Office locks the files so they're only synced aft…

> I can understand how with iOS's "no files" design, this is the only way forward, but on desktop? Please let it stop. Apparently mobile is the future and the desktop experience must be crippled to unify it with the mobile experience. Personally, I don't understand how anyone gets real work done on tablets and phones. Sure there are some pretty silos, but trying to move data between silos is usually a nightmare.

> Personally, I don't understand how anyone gets real work done on tablets and phones.

I think very few people do, aside from simple tasks like sending emails.

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#129

Post by com2kid »

skrebbel wrote: post #112

As an Office customer and a Dropbox customer, I can't help but have mixed feelings. Office already has "direct" OneDrive integration and it's pretty useless, how could it be any better on Dropbox? The whole thing about Dropbox is that just works . Files are files, folders are folders, if I move them about they move, etc. The only problem with Dropbox and Office is how Office locks the files so they're only synced aft…

> Office already has "direct" OneDrive integration and it's pretty useless, how could it be any better on Dropbox?

Useless?

Across my phone, tablet, laptop, and desktop, I would hardly call cloud file syncing useless.

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#130

Post by pioul »

sheetjs wrote: post #114
edpichler wrote: post #90

Microsoft integrating with competitor's products, this sounds news to me. A really good move, for both companies.

It's a good move for Microsoft, but it's not entirely obvious if this is a good move for dropbox or the storage ecosystem. For example, Box is also working with Microsoft: http://content.box.com/box-for-office-365 -- I would expect integrations with other platforms in the future as well. If the consumer experience is driven around Office apps rather than around the Dropbox app, then at one point the cloud storage sol…

> then at one point the cloud storage solutions truly become interchangeable

I remember one famous Steve saying to Drew Houston that Dropbox was a feature rather than a product. I'd say the need for such a thing as Dropbox made "Dropbox as a standalone product" possible, but in a world where every service starts having its own integrated "cloud" backup service, storage and sync do start looking like a feature.

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