Google will launch Google Drive for storing and sharing files. And it outdoes Dropbox by giving 5GB of capacity for free. Good for sharing or discussing your drawings with others. How do you think it?
I don't like it plus I got 32GB free from Dropbox and now I am on a team account and got over 100TB for $795/yr. google charges like $800 a month for 16TB
Well its been couple of years I have been using google drive. Lets see how it feels: Good for sharing large amount of information like large project files or pdfs that would usually be impossible to send by e-mail. The google docs and spreadsheets are very easy to use and good for group discussions and projects. However, they are not in docx format and if formulas or something are written they do not show up in word. Once I read that there was a couple and their parents did not allow them to talk on normal chatting apps so they opened up google docs where their parents wouldn’t check because it looked like they were studying. And they would chat there. Ah the lengths people can go to. Anyway that is off topic. So google drive also allows you to extend the storage by paying a little amount of money. But usually you wouldn’t need to do so 15 Gb is a lot of available space. Google drive is better than dropbox in a way that google drive is simpler to use. Its directly linked to your email so if any file is big its directly sent as drive attachment instead of having to separately upload again. And also lags much less than the usual dropbox. But google drive also has disadvantages. If you upload a word file into drive and open it in drive, it automatically changes to google drive document format and cannot be changed back. It causes a lot of information to be lost. The work is shown to every one in the document in real time so that’s good. But also it lags a lot. And by chance if your internet is not working well that day then it’s the end of your work day on google drive.
I love that example about couple chatting! Google Drive is really, really useful for sharing data with people and working on documents in real time. It's also great having access to all of your files on all of your devices anywhere. I very rarely use local files any more for spreadsheets etc. I'm still trying to cling onto the free 15GB. I keep getting close then having to backup up old emails to my hard drive and delete them from Google. I know could pay but then I'm tied into paying for the rest of my life, basically! In terms of other backup - I use BackBlaze that automatically backs up my entire hard drive for $5 a month. I've used it many times to restore files that I've accidentally changed or deleted, and the peace of mind is also great (and saves having to update backups manually, and buy new hard drives).
I have always used Dropbox and will continue to do so. I have been forced to use Google Drive on occassion but often I found it slow to open and move around a spreadsheet - maybe that was a connection problem but not the same issue with Dropbox. I dont know why but I dont think Google Drive will never be as popular as Dropbox even though there is the potential for Google to throw a lot of money at it. Maybe this is the one time that Google fails because it is seen as a "jack of all trades and master of none". Very unfair I know but should prompt some heated debate
Can you create shared documents and so on with Dropbox though? I still use Dropbox just for storing and sharing completed files but Google Drive is so useful because you can actually create word documents, spreadsheets, presentations etc. and have multiple people working on them at the same time, in different countries or timezones. It's almost completely replaced Microsoft Office for me (and I've replaced MS Office with the open source Libre Office - it's free and so far can do everything that MS Office used to do for me).
I guess it matters on where you are accessing from. These cloud services work better when accessed from specific places, regardless of the internet. Because when I went to Germany I did find dropbox to work perfectly like butter. But when I came back to Poland dropbox started to lag a lot, more than before. I tried doing these a couple of more times when I travelled. I found similar results. However, in both the countries my internet worked perfectly. Its based on servers and distances maybe. I am not sure.
Yeah, I tried to use Skype in Russia a few times and the entire program was just so laggy that it was unusable. Strangely, the web version worked fine so I figured that there was a problem with my program... but then once I left Russia it worked fine again!
These things are very common, my friend says spotify and Netflix have the same problem. They barely work there but if you see them in the US or else in Germany. They work amazing. The apps don’t lag, the videos don’t buffer, it directly plays. What a wonderful life living in these places.
Well, I wouldn't use anything that is not pro-grade in the sense that it misses notation, version control, and other collaboration-related features. For the mere sharing of something, sure why not? If that "something" is a drawing that is classified, or is subject to copyright, or could be useful to corporate intelligence, then I wouldn't trust any online file-sharing platform without establishing a safe layer first. Privacy and security must not be taken for granted by engineers, and our data are often quite valuable since they encapsulate many hours of work, often the result of a team of people.
