• RubberDuck@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Why does dropbox exist. For the same money Microsoft offers equal storage, plus office.

    • mosiacmango@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Dropbox had the first mover advantage. Onedrive lagged behind it for years. You can argue it still does.

      • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 months ago

        OneDrive is so fucking confusing to administrator.

        The files exist on your physical drive …except it doesn’t?

        You can’t remove the files…except when it does it on its own.

        You can’t move a file without some sort of synching issue.

        You can’t fucking disable it without going into the registry!

        I legit tried it in the early days of Win10 and it was a nightmare. I literally had to reinstall Windows and disable it upfront before things worked the way I expected.

        • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de
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          2 months ago

          going to “C:\Users\user\Documents” in explorer, vs just typing in “documents”. One takes you to your documents folder, which will be empty, the other takes you to some other path from onedrive

    • Alphane Moon@lemmy.worldOP
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      2 months ago

      One advantage of Dropbox is that it is not that integrated into Windows/office.

      I use Dropbox, albeit I have an old free account with much more storage than their 2GB base.

      • rooster_butt@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        I have 20 gigs free from when they had free permanent storage upgrades by referrals. I referred a bunch of “friends” with temporary email and virtual machines since it checked it wasn’t just being in stalled on an existing machine.

        This was over a decade ago and it’s still the highest storage free tier.

      • dan@upvote.au
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        2 months ago

        What do you mean? Dropbox is integrated into Windows using the Cloud Files API, which handles dynamically downloading files as needed, the ability to mark files so they’re always available offline, etc.

        Or did you mean a deeper integration like how Windows shows ads for OneDrive?

        • Alphane Moon@lemmy.worldOP
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          2 months ago

          I like that it’s a separate application. I had issues with the way OneDrive integrated with Windows/Office and conflicts with my corporate OneDrive account (this was a while ago, this may have been fixed).

          I always prefer to have a full local copy (Google Drive, which a use for specific data has been really annoying with this) without using Cloud Files API or any extra features. A literal cloud sync of specific folder, nothing else.

          I mostly use Dropbox out of habit (and because I have a grandfathered account). I’ve been meaning to switch to ProtonDrive (already have a paid account with them for email), just haven’t got to it yet.

    • dan@upvote.au
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      2 months ago

      For the same money Microsoft offers equal storage, plus office.

      Plus email! Same with Google (Google Workspace).

    • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I always wondered this too. It was a good idea 15 years ago. But, they don’t offer enough to justify the price. Literally everyone offers cloud storage now and a million other features too.