I Like Dropbox

I have known about Dropbox for over a year, but haven't gotten around to trying it until we bought a new laptop. Part of the reason I hadn't tried Dropbox was I didn't see a real need for it in my own computing life. My work computing of course is taken care of by the corporate infrastructure, including nightly backup. I use a Shared Drive to store ALL my work, so everything gets backed up regularly. (I am a big fan off Windows Offline Files, which, come to think of it, is very comparable to Dropbox functionality, within the context of corporate-managed IT assets.) For personal use, I have become enamored of Google Docs and cloud computing, so I just don't generate many local files to worry about.

However, this laptop will be my wife's primary computer, in her role as an independent contractor. And in my role as her Tier 1, 2 and 3 tech support person, I worry a lot about the reliability of her data. So, I thought it was time to fire up Dropbox, and so far I have not been disappointed. A secondary benefit will be the kids, who also insist on using M$ Office, even though I beg them to go the Google Docs route, so that if they have some kind of emergency (forgetting a printed paper, for instance), they can access their docs from schol.