

Dropbox: Files Without Borders - tomh-
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0628/technology-file-sharing-dropbox-google-files-without-borders.html

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gr366
_Rodeo producer North American Midway Entertainment saved $25,000 in the first
six weeks using Dropbox by eliminating overnight FedEx shipments with
paperwork._

Wow. Talk about having a great story to tell. I'm sure there's a lot of
individual users of Dropbox (myself included), but the business cost-savings
angle could be a huge one for them to pursue.

~~~
Groxx
Since Dropbox only does one-way access for people without an account, I assume
they saved 25k by _distributing_ paperwork, not receiving.

This implies they've been wasting almost $5,000 _per week_ because they didn't
find a content host / run an FTP / _frickin E-MAIL the stuff_.

What. The. (technological) Fail. You'd think they'd look into something like
that a _little_ earlier, as with a bit of setup an FTP host can be essentially
as easy.

edit: hell, just use a Google Docs form, that handles distribution _and_
filling it out and combining the results.

~~~
tel
I think that's the point of Dropbox. Setting up FTP _isn't_ as easy. Dropbox
is so friendly people use it in lieu of more complete, cheaper solutions.

~~~
Groxx
Setting it up - absolutely. Using it once it's in place - pretty close.

I don't expect _them_ to set it up _themselves_. Just to hunt someone down and
pay them a couple thousand to solve their ridiculously expensive problem.

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ashishbharthi
Absolutely true. Dropbox is one hell of a cloud backup solution. With Dropbox
iPhone app, I have all my important files with me in my pocket.

Does anybody have numbers on their current free/paid users?

~~~
benmathes
From the article:

 _He won't disclose details, but probably 2% of Dropbox's members are paying
customers, putting revenues at $14 million this year._

~~~
bl4k
2% is waaaay too high

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furtivefelon
Google docs does handle most files for uploading and downloading. I don't use
it much, but it's cheaper than dropbox, but less capable as well.

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dasil003
Dropbox is just incredibly well done. I tried using services like xdrive,
strongspace, idisk and a few others over the years and they all felt so
cumbersome that they never stuck. Dropbox by comparison seems to sync
incredibly fast, has a sensible way for dealing with conflicts, and just seems
to hit a sweet spot of simplicity and functionality.

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geezgod
dropbox is great but their upload speeds kills the service. I get around
40-60kb/s while on other sites i get 400-500kb/s

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jnoller
Good to see Dropbox getting the coverage - it really is a killer application
for end-users.

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twodayslate
They need to create some more paid plans. More variety would be wonderful!

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volida
I still remember that HN post announcing his project, before getting accepted
to YC.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863>

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tomjen3
Dropbox is definitely great, and it really do deserve its extremly widespread
usage.

It has actually made it so simple to do a backup that it gets done. Most
impressive.

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dsc
You have to use gnome to use Dropbox, hopefully they fix that. Then all the
systems folk will probably use this for quick n' dirty research projects.

~~~
canen
No you don't. I've been using Dropbox in KDE for months now.

<http://antrix.net/journal/techtalk/dropbox_kde.html>

A little searching goes a long way :)

~~~
jamesbritt
Thanks for this info. Last time I looked into this it appeared to be a
Nautilus thing only.

This is quite slick.

