Dropbox

[Muse]

My sister used Dropbox to allow various family members to snatch JPGs from her computer. In order to avail myself of this I believe I had to install Dropbox on one of my computers. It happened to be my desktop. I just got an email from Dropbox encouraging me to "make life easier" for myself by installing Dropbox on my other computers:

- - - -
Do you have more than one computer? Install Dropbox on all of them to make life easier!

Download Dropbox:
https://www.dropbox.com/l/DRtaScFpCpzenfJr/downloading

By adding Dropbox to another computer, you can:
- Save a file to all your computers at once
- Start work on one computer, then pick up where you left off on another
- Get to your photos, docs, and videos from anywhere

Happy Dropboxing!
- The Dropbox Team
- - - -

Well, please correct me if I'm wrong but to make this sort of thing workable, being sharing documents among the machines, the machines doing so have to be on in real time. I right now on my network have one dedicated machine to stay on and the others only run when I'm at the machine, the rest of the time they are typically in suspend. The one all the time on is a laptop that has a 2TB USB connected HD that has my working data. Thus if I do database or text files or whatever, the documents usually are on that 2TB HD. Dropbox, as I see it, is only useful to me to share documents with people elsewhere. Am I right about this? Yes, I can have it on all my computers but it would only serve to allow me to share documents on any of these computers with family/friends/etc.

Yesterday, I placed around 250MB of JPGs in my Dropbox folder and set up my sister to be the only one accessing it. I sent her an email telling her about this, but suppose that Dropbox also alerted her. I was computing and saw little messages off the right part of the Windows XP taskbar saying that such and such a file would be deleted unless I clicked. This amazed me, I figured the files would just stay in my Dropbox folder, but evidently having only one person set up to access the folder caused the files to be deleted once uploaded. Is this normal behavior? If I set up 6 people to have access would the files remain? Would they be deleted once the 6th person uploaded the files? Do these people have any choice about what they want to upload or do they automatically upload whatever's in the Dropbox folder they're set up to have access to?

 

[lxskllr]

Not entirely sure what you're asking. I don't like the idea of sharing an account with other people, unless it's solely for something like family pictures. Anything that gets put into the Dropbox folder will be synced to everyone on that account. If a computer isn't online, it naturally won't get updated, but as soon as it goes online, it'll sync up, and up/download any changes made to that account.

 

[ImDonly1]

First part, dropbox works by uploading whatever you put in the dropbox folder to their server. So even if your computer is off, anyone can get the files. They are hosted by dropbox. I think that was what the first part was asking?

The second part, yes people can delete the files you have in a shared folder with them. However, they are not completely deleted. You have 30 days to undelete them. If you login to the dropbox website with your account you can see a list of deleted files and restore them. It is not normal for files to delete themselves. Either someone deleted them or something else weird happened. I assue your sister either moved to pictures to a different folder (causing them to be deleted from the dropbox) or deleted them.

The better option, if you don't want her to delete the files, would be to NOT have a shared folder with her, but to just send a download link to the files in the folder. Instead of right-click -> dropbox -> share folder, do right-click ->dropbox -> share link.

 

[Muse]

Good info, thanks.

 

[Muse]

I installed Dropbox first on my desktop. Today, I did the installation on my kitchen laptop because I wanted to send an email link to a file I dropped into a folder I created under the Dropbox folder. I couldn't do it and I resorted to sneaker-netting the file up to my desktop and sent the email from there.

The installation on my desktop (which also runs XP SP3), is such that when I open the Dropbox folder there is a blue column on the left where I have various choices including sharing a folder and sending an email link to a folder (what I wanted to do). However on the laptop the folder has no such column. Instead it looks just like a folder as you would see it in Windows' Explorer. I uninstalled and reinstalled, no difference. I looked and have been unable to find any setting in Preferences to "fix" the problem. What could this be about?

 

[Muse]

-snip-
The better option, if you don't want her to delete the files, would be to NOT have a shared folder with her, but to just send a download link to the files in the folder. Instead of right-click -> dropbox -> share folder, do right-click ->dropbox -> share link.

I don't see the ability to right click and get those choices. There's a Dropbox icon in my tray at the bottom right. That has context menu items but not that one. I see:

Open Dropbox Folder (Yes, it's bolded)
Launch Dropbox Website
Recently changed files >
------------------
Get more space
Pause synching
------------------
Preferences
Help center
------------------
Exit

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If I open my Dropbox folder and right click any of the folders I have in it I get only the typical context menu I get in Windows' Explorer, AFAIK...

 

[lxskllr]

Dunno. I'm on Debian, and mine just looks like a folder. If I wanted to do what I think you're trying to do, I'd keep a .txt file in the dropbox folder, and copy/paste text I wanted into it. That way that text would get synced to all my dropbox machines.

 

[Muse]

Dunno. I'm on Debian, and mine just looks like a folder. If I wanted to do what I think you're trying to do, I'd keep a .txt file in the dropbox folder, and copy/paste text I wanted into it. That way that text would get synced to all my dropbox machines.

So far my only use for DB is to put stuff in it so people elsewhere can get it, things pretty much too big to send in an email, such as a 173MB MP3 I sent the other day. Off my Desktop it was a breeze, but I can't figure out how to do it from the laptop, as I said here earlier today. I have no need to synch my machines. Text files on all my machines are set up to save to my server machine, to the same folder. Dropbox wouldn't seem to be an advantage, therefore. My database program is set up the same way. It searches and saves data to the same folder on the server no matter what machine I use.

 

[sm625]

Dropbox is useful no matter how you use your pc. If it is offline it will update the dropbox as soon as it is awoken. But I would treat your dropbox as a sort of quasi-temp folder. You should only use it for sharing. I wouldnt store improtant documents in there.

 

[ImDonly1]

If I open my Dropbox folder and right click any of the folders I have in it I get only the typical context menu I get in Windows' Explorer, AFAIK...

Should be getting this...
https://www.dropbox.com/help/167/en

 

[yinan]

I use a VM for Dropbox. Anything I want to sync for sharing purposes gets thrown in there, and I dont have to worry about the program constantly running on my comp.

 

[Fardringle]

Why not just close it when you don't want to have it running? Closing the system tray icon completely closes the DropBox app and background service.

 

[yinan]

Paranoid. I generally try to install as few apps as possible on my system. The apps I do need as presented to me as virtual apps from APP-V.

 

[Muse]

An odd thing happened. The first time I tried to share the contents of a folder under ..\Dropbox it seemed to work out OK. My email client is a 3rd party program called Forte Agent, and I run an old version, 1.92x. Once in the Dropbox folder I clicked the applet named Email this folder's files. My default email program was not opened, but instead Microsoft Mail or some subset of it opened and I used it to send the message to my sister which basically was her access to the folder in which I had a slew of JPGs. Evidently she deleted the files as she uploaded them from my machine (I saw little popups emanating from approximately the icon on my taskbar for Dropbox saying that such and such JPG was about to be deleted and I could save it from being deleted by clicking now!).

Well, I put another folder under Dropbox a few days ago and drop a file in it and likewise send a link to a person I know who requested the file from me. However, she never got the email. I did it again next day and again she didn't get it. I did a workaround, being attaching the file (12MB) to an email from my default email program, which fortunately worked. Now I don't know what to make of the failure to send the link. The recipient had a gmail account, but I can't imagine that would have anything to do with it.