As long as people have worked with multiple computers, they’ve always had to find ways to transfer files between them. Back in the old days, we used square plastic things called “floppy diskettes” to store data and recall it on any convenient computer. They could hold an amazing 1.41 megabytes worth of files. Back when everything was plain text, that was workable.
Nowadays, people still use sneakernet, though the medium of choice is now USB flash drives and occasionally an external hard disk. But the idea remains the same: You have files you’re working on, and you want to access them on more than one computer; so you load the files onto a drive and bring them with you. Perhaps you want to take your work home, or you want to smuggle some music into your workplace or school. Maybe you’re writing a novel and you want to continue to write while you travel.
Meet Dropbox.
Dropbox does away with the need to manually copy files from place to place. All you have to do is tell the software which files it should sync, and those files are mirrored in “the cloud,” where any of your linked computers can access them. You can view documents on your iPhone/iPod, edit them on your laptop, or work with them on someone else’s computer.
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