Dropbox hits two million Windows, Mac and Linux users

David M Williams
Tuesday, 29 September 2009 17:54

Opinion and Analysis

Nevertheless, Dropbox does retain version information and consequently users can revert to previous versions in case of mistake. This is great for individuals but a true boon for company systems administrators meaning users can perform a measure of self service.

That said, version history eats into the available quota. Free accounts have 2GB of storage available but by performing a few simple tasks (watch a tour, install Dropbox on two machines, sync some files, post a promotional link on Facebook or Twitter) you can get 250MB more.

If you sign up via my referral link then both you and I get another 250MB up to 3GB additional space total, making a maximum of 5GB for a free account. (For a non-referral link click here.) Alternatively, paid accounts begin at $USD 4.99/month for 10GB to $USD 19.99/month for 100GB.

It is also important to keep in mind that sharing folders will consume quota for all parties. Dropbox recognised early on the potential for misuse if (say) one person signed up for 10 free accounts and shared folders in such a way that they gained 20GB of disk space.

Such a situation isn’t conducive to Dropbox’s business model, and consequently the company determined that a shared folder ought to carry the same quota hit on all parties using that folder. This is a cause of chagrin for some, particularly if a paid account tries to share a folder with more than 2GB of files with a free account.

Of course, Dropbox isn’t the first cloud-based storage provider on the market. Earlier this year Hewlett-Packard’s Upline system closed down although it varied from Dropbox on two major points.

First, Upline had pricing which was more attractive – topping at $USD 8.99/month for unlimited storage – but which was clearly less sustainable as a commercial venture.

Additionally, Upline suffered outages almost right from the beginning, with downtime of an entire week just three weeks after commencement.

In a cycle of ups and downs Yahoo! also closed its decade old Yahoo! Briefcase service earlier this year while Microsoft launched Live Mesh. However, Live Mesh offers a Windows-only solution as compared to Dropbox’s multiplatform support.

If you’re living the modern tech lifestyle and haven’t yet embraced the cloud then you owe it to your own sanity and file management regime to check Dropbox out.