Review

Dropbox

What actually is Dropbox?

Dropbox is a personal cloud storage provider which allows users to save documents, photos and videos in the cloud. In simple terms, this means that users can access their documents anywhere in the world with an internet connection. Dropbox provide 2GB storage for free, which is about enough for 600 photos. This amount of storage however is more than adequate when storing documents such as word and powerpoint files. Typically word files take up storage in minimal storage, and even lengthy documents generally take up less than 1mb. This means that 2GB of storage allows for thousands of word documents to be stored. Dropbox do howver allow for a paid monthly service of £7.99 for an increased storage amount of 1Tb (1000GB). This would allow a user to store 2 million photos! The popularity of dropbox has exploded since its launch, with over 50 million current users as of 2016, and a new user joining every second on average.

Dropbox: A background

Dropbox was founded in 2007 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology students, Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi. The idea originated when founder Houston forgot his USB flash drive, and stumbled upon the realisation that there must be a better option for users to save their files. He initially began trying to create something for his personal use, buy then realised that he could possibly create something to benefit the many many people who have and would continue to suffer the problems he had. This has led to huge profitability for the business, in 2011 they made $240 million although 96% of their users did not pay anything.

Advantages

The main advantage for students using dropbox is it provides security to those who frequently handle files as it guarantees their security. Saving it on a local computer or laptop hard drive means a user is subject to the risk of losing their files, possibly through theft of the computer, or possibly a virus, rendering the device, and its content, useless. I have personally found dropbox to be more useful in cases where i have forgotten to print the document, or forgotten my laptop. In the situations i can easily continue or print my work in many places such as a library or at school or university. This often saves me from having to hand work in late. As you can see in figure 1, there is an extremely handy dropbox icon in the top right corner of the mac iOS interface which allows for quick access to my files. Truly, the only difficulty in using dropbox is the fact it will take a few moments of your time to make an account. The difficulty in using the service is as minimal as it could possibly be.