On DropBox a life-saver...

Once every year or two, I get new laptops from work. When you have to do development with tools and utilities needing ever increasing horsepower to run, you need that kind of upgrade. Most people love new machines since it means new toys, more capability to do stuffs that they might otherwise not be able to do with older machine with less powerful machines.

While that's all well and good, I can't tell you how much I drag that possibility. Don't get me wrong, I like machines with more horsepower. Who can't resist that anyways. But I hate the idea of having to reconfigure and set up a brand new environment every time that happens. True, I can get the machine imaged to load up company-censured apps, but I would still need to set up the stuffs that I need for my environment. Even just as mundane as copying files across from one environment to another environment is a royal pain. I have to remember what files to copy, and make sure the copy would happen. It's really mundane, but it has to be done.

But that's not the worst. At least with machine upgrade, it'll only happen once. My worst nightmare is the sync'ing of different machines and laptop that I use for work and personal purposes. With dev stuffs, it's easier since I can always use source control as the ultimate repository for files of importance. Everything else, it's not so fortunate. There's been a while when I would use Google Docs to hold the latest version of files (particularly personal stuffs) that I need. But I can tell you it's still a major hassle. At the end of a long working day, I can't always be sure to upload the files with changes since I just want to get away from the machine so badly.

And then, something magical happens. It's called DropBox.

I can't believe it I haven't discovered it sooner. Well, you see, I've got a new laptop (again) - I love the horsepower - but I have to do the configuration and copying all over again. Every damn time I switch machines, I would invariably lose some files along the way. It's when I decide to give it a try, given the word of mouth and how easy it is to use.

Indeed, if you think of it, the functionality of DropBox is actually not that revolutionary, but it's so easy to use and it looks to be fairly robust. It's essentially a little utility that lets you to drive mapping; but instead of mapping network drive from, say, your local machine, you're doing the mapping with DropBox's server in the cloud. (Well, you should know by now that the cloud is just another much hyped-up glam name for services delivered over the web. Yep, you get it, like it's a "big deal," IMHO.)

But the DropBox functionality is so focused yet it's something that's so fundamental and essential. So, I install the utility, create my account with them (free basic first, in case it doesn't work out), then designate what folders and files to sync and share. Not that I have any compelling reason to share my machine or life with anyone, the fact that I can now sync at least the portion of the environment(s) on different machines save me so much time and angst, that I can't thank DropBox often enough.

I know, I know, I almost sound like religion. I wish DropBox would pay me to do advertisement since I'd love to be their case study. :) But, no, I just have to write the little note in my journal, for how far cloud service has come along; by that, I mean truly meaningful services and not just time-wasting stuffs. I don't give a horse-shit about social networking (which is for those with too much time on their hands), but the DropBox functionality has made my day.