8OctWork on your files from anywhere with Dropbox

Have you ever wished you could work on your files from different computers at different locations without having to manually synchronize the files between computers? One handy solution that we’ve comes across is Dropbox. This handy website gives you online storage and automatically syncs any desired folder to your files stored online. Best of all they offer different plans including a free plan with a generous 2GB of storage space.

How it works is that you sign up for an account, and then download a lightweight utility. You then designate the folder(s) which you’d like to have a copy of on the web and the utility will automatically copy those files to the online storage location. You can then install the utility on another computer which will automatically download those files. Everytime you add, update or delete files, the utility synchronizes its online copy of those files. If you then log into another computer and run the utility, that computer will then be syncronized. The utility is available for Windows, Mac, Linux and various mobile platforms.

Dropbox eliminates the need to use email to transfer files. This is handy because ISP’s often limit email file transfers to between 4 and 8 megabytes. We’ve also found Dropbox to be very handy when two people are working on a file because everytime the file is saved, the other person’s computer is automatically synced to the newly updated file. Dropbox also provides optional notifications which will tell you whenever a file has changed. We do however recommend that you work on files in a location which has not been designated for syncronization by Dropbox. If someone decides to delete or update the file, then the file will be deleted or updated on all PC’s which are being syncronized by Dropbox.

So if you’re looking to avoid email file transfers and need an automated way to keep your files in sync across PCs, check out Dropbox.