Dropbox
Among the forty software engineering students I see every day, there are:
- Mac OS X users
- Ubuntu users
- Windows XP users
- Windows 7 users
We installed these OSes on our laptops, netbooks, desktops computers and smartphones. We don’t share the same point of view about how easy, intuitive or powerful our filesystem should be to use. We all have different user interfaces, we all joke about the ugliness or the lack of features of the other ones.
We all have to work in groups so we have to share files everyday and keep these files synced. We all use Dropbox: it’s free, simple, automatic, cross-platform and provides backup and versioning.
It’s not just a tool for groups: it became ridiculous to watch someone use a USB key for transferring a PowerPoint presentation from his own desktop computer to his own laptop.
I’m really amazed how Dropbox fits the needs of a very demanding and heterogeneous group of students. It’s like a feature every OS should have.
Dropbox should be a standard.
