Dropbox Alternative

[wodgina]

Hey Freaks!

I use Dropbox for my business does anybody know a file sharing service which is better? cheaper? free? more space?

Something that a few employees can use. As we are a startup keeping costs low is important at the moment.

Looking forward to some good info.

Wodg

[intrigued]

Maybe look into setting up a simple ftp server?  Filezilla is pretty easy to use and free.  You'd just be limited by the space of whatever you run it on.  It's not necessarily a "good" solution to be mingling up all your stuff, but if you're relatively small you could probably just drop it on whatever other box you are running stuff from.

For ultra-classiness, you should look into setting up a mapped network drive.  That way people can use it just like a regular folder on their pcs.  Maybe these are too "large scale" solutions for you, but really I think they should be pretty easily manageable.

I've never found any of the web based large file sharing solutions to be good, though I'm sure plenty of them are passable.

[raw-al]

How can I send a large file like 4 - 5 giggs to someone? To send it would be expensive and risky.

[intrigued]

It really all depends on how you are set up and who you need to send it to.  Within a company network, the mapped network drive is definitely a sleeker option.

If you're just trying to send a file to some random other person I've had the most success just setting up filezilla server and letting them pickup the file through ftp (or if they have an ftp server it'd be even easier to drop it off to them).  A file that size you definitely want to zip with maximum compression before you shoot it out the door (and then you can put some easy zip encryption on it if you're looking for a little extra safety on your data too, not that that's ultra secure or anything but it's better than nothing).

If you're close enough to someone, it's hard to beat the reliability of a flash drive.  What do you mean to send it would be expensive and "risky"?

[raw-al]

I want to send a half a dozen DVDs to a friend in South Africa. Apparently the mail is very poor and slow, read theft/delays, so I was trying to figure how to do it online.

OH yes and to courier I'm guessing $ 100. + -

[TylerDurden]

I want to send a half a dozen DVDs to a friend in South Africa. Apparently the mail is very poor and slow, read theft/delays, so I was trying to figure how to do it online.

OH yes and to courier I'm guessing $ 100. + -

I get very, very angry when I hear about thefts of packages  or of postmen just throwing their letters into their  rubbish-bins because they can't be bothered to do any work. They are on the same level as doctors and lawyers, in a position of public trust, and should therefore be fined heavily etc. when caught.

[intrigued]

If it's a friend situation... I use "TeamViewer" frequently for remote controlling to pcs to basically do tech support for friends.  I believe it has a built in file transfer option that should work pretty easily.  I think FTP would be a better option long run, but teamviewer will probably get the job done for you and would require a bit less tech savvy, especially if either of you have routers/firewalls in the way.

[raw-al]

With these specs
6.22 mbps DL
.88 Mbps UL

I am guessing this would be a long upload.

Tyler I hear ya. Canada has a very good service in fact better than couriers. I talked my co-workers into using Canada Post for important AOG deliveries. US postal Service I found to be good also trans-border.

[intrigued]

Oh yeah, sending a lot of large files over the internet without a very fast connection is going to take a while no matter how you do it.  If you can get it at 500kb/s then you're looking at a few hrs for a dvd.  There's no real way to mitigate that, either you have to upload the files somewhere on the internet or directly to your friend, or you have to physically get the data to him.

Are they common dvds?  The obvious response would be that torrenting them, as long as they are legally torrentable would probably be a lot faster than an individual trying to send them.

[raw-al]

I just found out his connection is 500kb download

[intrigued]

Yeah, like I said, it's just the nature of the beast.  You have large files you need to send over the internet, it's going to take a while.  I will continue suggesting that you see how much you can compress them before sending to help with that issue.  I still think something like filezilla will be your best bet, unless it's possible to torrent them on his side.

[eveheart]

I use Dropbox for my business does anybody know a file sharing service which is better? cheaper? free? more space?

My company just switched to Gmail and Google apps, which I think is a pain in the ass because it doesn't sync files automatically when I update them. I use Dropbox within my department and find that it is a no-brainer for sharing files with my colleagues. I can make subfolders for stuff I want to share, and keep the main folder for my stuff alone.