I set up Dropbox on my two laptop computers. When I move a file into my Dropbox folder on one computer, if the other is running and on line -- or, if not, the next time I start it up -- the two computers will synchronize their Dropbox folder. That is, any file I have added to Dropbox on one computer will be sent to the other's Dropbox folder. If I delete a file in the Dropbox folder on one computer, the other computer deletes that same file.
I recently found out that it works as well halfway round the world as it does from one room to another. Someone in London can put a file of any size up to 2GB in their Dropbox folder and notify me; I will get a message that I have been asked to share a Dropbox file, and I can accept. A 500MB file takes, ballpark, an hour to download.
Hotmail, Yahoo, and Gmail allow attachments up to 10MB, 20MB, and 20MB, respectively. Hotmail's SkyDrive has a whopping 25GB capacity -- but the maximum size of any one file is 50 MB. If you have a 500 MB audio file to send, you have to split it into ten pieces (I don't think so.)
Dropbox is free. You can pay for more storage, and there are other ways of accomplishing the same thing. But Dropbox's simplicity is outstanding -- it's just a folder on your hard drive. You put stuff into it for transfer to other computers. Click this link for a promo video from dropbox.com, and start sharing those big music, picture, and video files with friends.
0 comments:
Post a Comment