Get 50GB of Box free for life • Hacker News Board

Re: Get 50GB of Box free for life

#11

Post by iamdann » Tue, Feb 12, 2013, 5:53 PM UTC

I've already got a 50GB Box account through a free promo a while ago...but the account has file size limitations unless you pay for an upgrade. I'd assume this deal has the same restrictions. I forget the upload size limit, but it was enough to keep me from actually using them for my personal needs.

I pay $25/year for 25GB of Amazon cloud storage, which includes unlimited music storage and no upload limits. I'm happy with that deal for now.

Re: Get 50GB of Box free for life

#12

Post by andrewgjohnson » Tue, Feb 12, 2013, 5:54 PM UTC

Signed up, the desktop client seems a lot clunkier than Dropbox (I use Windows 7 for those wondering)

I don't really use any online backup service all that much -- all my docs are in Google Docs which I guess is Google Drive now and I'm a single dude so I don't have hoards of kids videos & photos. After seeing this and signing up I was planning on installing this on my mom's computer (currently she's using Dropbox -- down to 2GB after not wanting to pay for more than that) but don't know if I'm going to follow through just because this seems so clunky and un-intuitive.

Odd, it seems Dropbox somewhat perfected the model of "here's your folder (it's blue not manilla so you remember which one it is) just put your stuff in it and we'll back it up online and sync it up with the blue folders on your other computers" -- the "Default Sync Folder" is a real bummer.

Re: Get 50GB of Box free for life

#13

Post by j_s » Tue, Feb 12, 2013, 5:55 PM UTC

Last time I checked, file size is capped at 250mb for the free tier.

Re: Get 50GB of Box free for life

#14

Post by kzrdude » Tue, Feb 12, 2013, 5:55 PM UTC

iamdann wrote: post #11

I've already got a 50GB Box account through a free promo a while ago...but the account has file size limitations unless you pay for an upgrade. I'd assume this deal has the same restrictions. I forget the upload size limit, but it was enough to keep me from actually using them for my personal needs. I pay $25/year for 25GB of Amazon cloud storage, which includes unlimited music storage and no upload limits. I'm happy…

Git Annex can store to it, and it enables automatic file chunking.

Re: Get 50GB of Box free for life

#15

Post by macalicious » Tue, Feb 12, 2013, 5:56 PM UTC

manishsharan wrote: post #3

Thats a lot of GB. Several times more than my free Dropbox + Google Drive. So where is the catch ? There has to be one .

The user interface is not as intuitive as Dropbox's. Box, at least on the Mac, doesn't integrate es nicely as Dropbox. The web interface is very unintuitive and overstuffed with features as well.

At least that's my first impression of Box, when compared to Dropbox.

Re: Get 50GB of Box free for life

#16

Post by rm999 » Tue, Feb 12, 2013, 5:56 PM UTC

My first thought: I see no reason not to switch over from dropbox, it should take me about 10 minutes to switch. I could even run both at the same time for redundancy.

My second thought: from an investing perspective the danger in this space is the easy commoditization. This will lead to high competition and low profits, with hopefully some differentiation on quality (especially dependability).

Re: Get 50GB of Box free for life

#17

Post by tiredoffps » Tue, Feb 12, 2013, 5:57 PM UTC

good for family photos. 250MB file limit...can't really use it for much.

Re: Get 50GB of Box free for life

#18

Post by mladenkovacevic » Tue, Feb 12, 2013, 5:58 PM UTC

I already have 50GB from the LG promo by signing up from my Nexus 4. I guess this is only for new accounts?

Re: Get 50GB of Box free for life

#19

Post by maccard » Tue, Feb 12, 2013, 6:00 PM UTC

andrewgjohnson wrote: post #12

Signed up, the desktop client seems a lot clunkier than Dropbox (I use Windows 7 for those wondering) I don't really use any online backup service all that much -- all my docs are in Google Docs which I guess is Google Drive now and I'm a single dude so I don't have hoards of kids videos & photos. After seeing this and signing up I was planning on installing this on my mom's computer (currently she's using Dropbox --…

Pity that blue manilla folder is the same folder as every other folder on mac

Re: Get 50GB of Box free for life

#20

Post by wutbrodo » Tue, Feb 12, 2013, 6:01 PM UTC

rm999 wrote: post #16

My first thought: I see no reason not to switch over from dropbox, it should take me about 10 minutes to switch. I could even run both at the same time for redundancy. My second thought: from an investing perspective the danger in this space is the easy commoditization. This will lead to high competition and low profits, with hopefully some differentiation on quality (especially dependability).

This has been the case for me for the last couple of years. I used to see promotions like this constantly (even going back to when 8 free GB was on offer instead of 50), and as a result I have a small collection of different file storage services that add up to an okay amount of storage, mostly due to the couple of 50 GB promotions.

The one thing to be careful about with Box is the limitations they put on access; The promotion I got some time ago for 50 GB has a file size limit of 100 MB and doesn't allow download of folders with a free account. This makes it impossible to store a few large files and inconvenient to store many small ones (though WebDAV access makes the latter less of an issue.