1. re: the first part, many people want something plug and play. and even if they were plug and play, the problem is that the user experience (on windows at least) with online drives generally sucks, and you don't have disconnected access.
windows for sure doesn't hide latency well (CIFS is bad, webdav etc. are worse), and most apps are written as if the disk was local, and assume, for example, accessing a file only takes a few ms. if the server is 80ms away, and you do 100 accesses (e.g. the open file common dialog listing a directory and poking files for various attributes or icons) serially, suddenly your UI locks up for _seconds_ (joel spolsky summarizes this well in his article on leaky abstractions.) ditto saving any file; you change one character in your 20mb word file and hit save, and your upstream-capped 40k/sec comcast connection is hosed for 8 minutes. sure for docs of a few hundred k it's fine, but doing work on large docs on an online drive feels like walking around with cinder blocks tied to your feet. anyway, the point of that rant was that dropbox uses a _local_ folder with efficient sync in the background, which is an important difference :)
2. true, if you're both not at your computer and on another computer without net access, this won't replace a usb drive :) but the case i'm worried about is being, for example, on a plane, and dropbox will let you get to the most recent version of your docs at the time you were last connected, and will sync everything up when you get back online (without you having to copy anything or really do anything.)
3. there are some unannounced viral parts i didn't get to show in there :) it'll be a freemium model. up to x gb free, tiered plans above that.
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1. Re: the first point, the market is craving a seamless "plug and play" experience. Even with that, the current UX for online drives—especially on Windows—is frankly subpar and lacks offline accessibility.
Windows struggles with latency (CIFS and WebDAV just don't cut it), and most legacy apps assume local disk speeds. When you're dealing with 80ms of latency over 100 serial accesses, your UI freezes for seconds. (Shoutout to Joel Spolsky’s piece on leaky abstractions—classic read! ) Saving files is another bottleneck; a minor edit on a 20MB file can choke a standard connection for minutes. While it works for small docs, managing large files on a cloud drive feels like running with lead weights. That’s why Dropbox is a game-changer: it leverages a local folder with high-efficiency background syncing. Huge differentiator!
2. Valid point—if you’re offline and away from your primary device, a USB drive is still king. But for the "airplane mode" scenario, Dropbox ensures you have the latest versions of your docs ready to go. Once you’re back online, it syncs everything automatically. Zero friction.
3. We’ve got some exciting viral features under wraps that I couldn't showcase just yet! We’re moving forward with a freemium model: generous free storage to start, with tiered premium plans for power users. #CloudComputing #SaaS #Innovation #UserExperience