Back to School Tip: Use Dropbox to ease your school workflow

For many students around the world, its back to school. It’s back to reading books, studying, and more importantly, working on assignments. If your school is like mine, the majority of assignments you work on are done on productivity programs like Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, etc., and having a smooth workflow between your school and home computers can be pretty difficult to maintain (especially if you have no way of accessing your personal school drive at home). Sure you can use flash drives, and the process of e-mailing documents to yourself to get everything done, but unfortunately we lose flash drives, and sometimes e-mails don’t send. The solution: a file hosting site, and there is no easier site than Dropbox. See what makes Dropbox so special after the break…

Dropbox Basics

Signing up for Dropbox is free. All you have to do is go to the Dropbox site and make an account. With your account, you have 2.5 gigabytes of space that you can use as you wish (and you can pay $9.99+ USD monthly for extra room – more info on their website). Uploading is a simple as performing a few clicks, and downloading files from your Dropbox is even easier.

The beauty of Dropbox is that it works like the file browser on your computer – it basically allows you to make folders to organize all your files. (If you squint at the picture above, you will see that I have made numerous folders to organize my Dropbox, including one for school documents.) You also can duplicate and rename files as you would be able to in your computer’s file browser. In addition, you can also make collaborative folders, where you and several other Dropbox users can host (as a whole) and share files across accounts. This feature can be great for school group projects. And for more convenience, there is also a “Public” folder, where non-Dropbox users can directly download individual files (not to access the actual folder).

Mac/PC Integration

The most important feature that Dropbox has to offer, is Mac and PC Integration. “What is that?” Basically, you install Dropbox on your computer, hook it up to your account, and essentially, it creates a dedicated “Dropbox” folder on your hard drive. And every time you drag a file and/or folder into the folder, it/they automatically syncs to Dropbox.com. It also works vice-versa; if you upload a file via Dropbox.com, it will automatically sync to your computer. And if you alter files and folders (i.e. overwriting, renaming, etc.) from any one of your Dropbox access points, the others will be updated to be exactly the same.Keep in mind, however, that if you have little room on your computer’s hard drive, and you have Dropbox installed, you might be syncing files you don’t want (or don’t have the room for) and can end up causing problems.

Wrap-Up

So basically, Dropbox is a great way to host, as well as transfer files between computers. It is a easier alternative to bringing around a flash drive and emailing stuff to yourself. The Dropbox System, in itself, is flexible – allowing you to upload and download any files you need and want from basically anywhere, given that you have a computer and internet connection. From this, it’s safe to say that this can be a great tool for your workflow, whether it be school work, or [work] work. Again, feel free to try Dropbox at Dropbox.com.

Reader Challenge:

We would like you to leave a response stating what you use to connect to your computer from a different location. Whether its the family computer at home that you access from work or if its your mac in your room that you connect to during school, we would love to know! Please remember that everyone is entitled to their own opinion.