Dropbox, is it worth installing

[newconvert]

My daughter wants to install Dropbox on this laptop, so she can use it to submit papers for her high school classes. She has her own login account, so she could customize it as she needs. I have a few concerns though. I'm running LinuxMint 14 Cinnamon 64-bit.

1. Is Dropbox safe to run? I've never used it myself, and don't run any file-sharing software. The few times I have moved large chunks of data before, I have used sites like adrive.com, which is simply a webpage you log into and upload files. I have never used any that require me to install a program on my computer (WinXP at the time). So, is having a program always waiting to upload files a problem?

2. This is a laptop, using wifi over a lousy router that I want to replace as soon as I can afford a better one. Lately we are losing wifi connection and have to power cycle the router once a day. Only the wifi signal is bad, my wired computer never has a problem. Until I replace it, will this cause major issues?

3. I didn't even know Dropbox had a Linux installer. I'm sure the program works well under Windows, but how is its Linux performance? There are versions for Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora, plus the source code. If I use the Ubuntu version, will I need to customize the installation because Mint has different directory names? Or would the differences even make it not work?

4. Should I just tell her to use her older WindowsXp computer in her room? She told me it is slow and the small hard drive is half full, and she thinks the laptop would work better. My laptop specs are in my sig below.

So, sages of LinuxMint, please enlighten me. What is my best option in this matter?

[viking777]

I stopped using it for one main reason, it will only sync items in your home folder. To me this is useless, and makes it not worth while. (Ubuntu One is the same). I switched to using SpiderOak which is extremely secure (everything encrypted and no record of passwords kept anywhere at all) but the main thing is that I can sync stuff from anywhere on my hard drive.

The downsides to that are that you don't get as much storage as Dropbox (2Gb for free although if you happen to be interested I can get you another 1Gb by referring you, but I would have to have an email address for that) and their servers are a bit slow for me, I think they are in the USA (not sure about that) but I am not.

A lot of people get on very well with Dropbox, the fact that I never could, you should not let influence your decision at all. SpiderOak is fully LInux compatible but so is Dropbox.

https://spideroak.com/

[daveinuk]

I installed dropbox the other day out of curiosity, pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to use and synch'd it with a blackberry, all done in half an hour or so.
I'd say if it's for ease of use and simplicity for having access to a reasonable chunk of data at any time then so far it looks good, not heard of spideroak but i'll take a look at that too.
There are other ways and as a lot are free to an extent it's always worth trying a few............

[tdockery97]

I've been using Dropbox for a while now and have had no problems whatsoever.

[PreacherMan]

Was having similar issue till updates loaded But I am using two routers one internal Broadcom in a Dell 1545 lappy and a linksys 600N stick the only issue I am having now is the if you try to switch ether one off it turns it's self back on and throws that please enter code sign rite up in the middle of what ever your doing and it is annoying as hell so I have to remove my stick to stop it.

[Lone.Wolf]

I've been using it for a while and it is great. I download manuals for equipment I'm working on. I put them in a folder on dropbox and I can access it from the office computer, the laptop in the shop or my tablet. Even if the file is open on one of the computers and I go to another I can open it again. It was easy to install and is very easy to use. The only draw back I have is if I load a file from the laptop into dropbox it takes a while but in all fairness that laptop is about 9 - 10 years old.

Since I don't share files, I haven't shared a folder in dropbox but I believe you have to set a particular folder to share and unless you set that option it is not accessible to anyone else.

[Adelante]

Dropbox works beautifully for me on LinuxMint 14 Cinnamon 64-bit and every other system I have it on. You will be surprised how easy it is to use and how smoothly it operates. Just try it.