Live data from Hacker News

Dropbox is in your Office

blog.dropbox.com

131–140 of 211 posts

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#132

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?.

I use https://www.copy.com/home/.

Copy is ran by Barracuda. My only current grief is the lack of 2 factor authentication, but they have stated that is on the near roadmap.

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#134

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?.

Is google drive an actual alternative to box/dropbox? I thought that if you uploaded (say) a .doc file, google drive changed it to a google docs file (which could be re-exported via docs->Word converter rather being copied out untransformed). This made me concerned that uploaded pictures would be down sampled etc.

I also seem to remember that if you click on a google doc file it opens a browser window rather than launching an app on your machine.

So I stopped trying to use it on my laptop. This system may have changed, or there may have been a way to avoid this.

I do use google docs/drive but only as a way to use docs that others have created and shared with me. I have noticed on iOS that opening docs shows a different set of files than opening the google drive app, which also does not reassure me.

It would be interesting to me if it were a true DB replacement. Of course since I now have to use Office 365 I just got unlimited Onedrive capacity so I may switch to that.

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#135

"We’ll also be releasing a Dropbox app for Windows Phone and Windows tablet users in the coming months." Not a day too early for the Windows Phone official app and another tick off the list of missing apps for Microsoft's mobile platform.

Late or not, they will grow market share now.

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#137

Whoa, hell just froze over. I wonder how the OneDrive team feels about this? This kind of a decision was made at the highest levels of the company.

Office is THE cash cow, OneDrive is (probably) a loss leader. Anything that can be done to ensure Office's continued near ubiquity, reduce usage friction, and shore up beach heads against competitors looking for an area to drive a wedge in will be done.

Well, that's really a new Microsoft.

Just a short while ago, anything that could be done to make their products more integrated, and increase lock-in would be done. It didn't really matter if the benefited product made money or not. (For a very visible blow, look at the Windows Phone and Windows 8.)

It's great to see that changing.

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#138
post #134

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?.

Is google drive an actual alternative to box/dropbox? I thought that if you uploaded (say) a .doc file, google drive changed it to a google docs file (which could be re-exported via docs->Word converter rather being copied out untransformed). This made me concerned that uploaded pictures would be down sampled etc. I also seem to remember that if you click on a google doc file it opens a browser window rather than lau…

There is an option (and has been for a while now) to upload files to Google Drive without converting them to Google's formats. So your opaque binary blobs will stay opaque binary blobs.

That said, in my experience, Google Drive and Dropbox still differ on the handling of corner cases (e.g. symlinks, permissions and extended attributes, etc.). At the time I tested, Google Drive was lagging in most of these cases, but that may have improved by now.

At any rate: check that your use cases actually work before moving all your data!

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#139
post #134

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?.

Is google drive an actual alternative to box/dropbox? I thought that if you uploaded (say) a .doc file, google drive changed it to a google docs file (which could be re-exported via docs->Word converter rather being copied out untransformed). This made me concerned that uploaded pictures would be down sampled etc. I also seem to remember that if you click on a google doc file it opens a browser window rather than lau…

While Drive can do document conversions and it might even do that by default you can certainly tell it not to.

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#140

Kudos to Microsoft for being open to partnering with Dropbox, as this new functionality appears to overlap with OneDrive. I hope this is another example of MS being more open and flexible after the recent leadership change.

Between this and Band I'm actually impressed with Microsoft.

While it was new at the time of it's release, Dropbox has fallen behind in usability and has sorely needed to effectively break into being a more collaborative platform. While I don't know the numbers, I can imagine SkyDrive hasn't exactly picked up with users.

All around this benefits both companies.

Post reply on HN