One of the really cool tools that I’ve been using lately is Dropbox, and I thought I share my reasons as to why, so that you too can see the benefits.

1. I’m a developer by day, and it’s great to have my projects stored and safe away from the possibility of a house burning down. But more than that, it means my code is avalable to me on my various machines in my life. And I have heaps.

2. I’m a DJ/Karaoke host by night. In 2001, my entire CD collection was stolen, in 2006 my entire collection was lost when my hard drive died. Never again. I store all my music, (not shared of course) on Dropbox. Sure I could re-download them with iTunes, but not in 1 bulk download method, I’d have to click each song individually. I know, that if I lost my computer, or it was stolen and I had 2 hours to get to a store, buy a new one and get to the gig. My collection can download as I’m playing.

3. I make movies and take photos. These are the most important assets in my life, because it’s moments in time that can’t be replaced. In the case of movies, with so many digital movie cameras out there, the data needs to be stored somewhere safe. Not only on Hard Drives that can fail at my house, but on Dropbox.

4. Cost. The cost of Dropbox is CHEAP! I mean CHEAP! As a developer, to use Microsoft storage in the cloud would cost me $1 less than the cost of DropBox. But I’d have no software to manage my files and the way the data is structured in Azure is NOT like it is on a hard drive (trust me, I know what I’m talking about). So for $1 a month I get great tools and don’t need to worry about all the other logistics of software development.

Dropbox has never failed on me and I will continue to use it. Especially in a world of Digital media.