Overall Rating
A relatively new comer, DropBox Online Backup has recently entered the market and has been making the rounds on networks like Digg and Reddit. Dropbox offers simple solutions for data online backup, storage and sharing. They presently provide a free account with 2 GB of online storage and 50 GB for $9.99 ($0.20/GB). Dropbox has a desktop client for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. Once the desktop client is installed, a Dropbox folder is created for which you can easily add documents to your online account via dragging and dropping the files into your Dropbox folder. Multiple computers can added to your Dropbox account by easily installing the desktop client to each computer. Thus any files added to a given Dropbox folder will be sychronized and accessible on any computer for which Dropbox is installed. A public folder enables you to easily share files with everybody. To be more selective with your sharing, you can simply add extra folders and allow access to specific individuals. As of now, Dropbox’s customer support is provided via FAQs, forum, and email.
Subsequent to installing Dropbox, there is a folder placed in your My Documents called “My Dropbox”. To summarize the service up in one sentence: Any documents placed into this folder will both be uploaded to the Dropbox servers, and will be synchronized with any other DropBox clients in your account. In a single workstation situation, this Dropbox folder is essentially a backup solution. If you have more than one PC in the account, any files placed into this folder on one computer will mindlessly be synchronized onto all others running Dropbox in the same account. This creates a nice way to send files back and forth. Like you my old method was either a) email to myself or b) put them on my USB keychain. Although those archaic methods work, Dropbox makes the process of transferring files to and from work completely effortless.
Installing Dropbox Online Backup is straightforward and subsequent to the installation, there is nothing to manage. Files placed into 
this folder are sent to the Dropbox servers in a secure way, and once they are there are encrypted. Dropbox at present uses Amazon S3 storage system “in the cloud” for their data storage.
In addition to this basic use, I have found the following features to be very handy:
Reversioning System
An outstanding feature is that Dropbox also includes a versioning system. For those that are not familiar with versioning systems, it enables you to keep multiple versions of the same file. This helps in case you need to ‘roll back’ a change if you are coding or writing, or merely for general use and tracking of updates. It also helps on the backend because only the changes to a file are be sent to the server, so much bandwidth is saved.
Photo Gallery
Another nifty feature is a built-in photo gallery. Drag photos to the “photos” folder and they are instantaneously available for viewing on the web in a simple manner.
In summary, Dropbox is one of the best internet backup and storage solution I have tested. It combines online file backup, storage, folder syncing, and versioning control in one easy to use package. My lone issues are that the main Dropbox manager/folder is not password protected (at least at the the time of this reviews), and you can only install one Dropbox account/folder per computer user account (issue for family computers without multiple user accounts). However, these are small issues that can be worked around by making your computer user accounts password secured and by just creating extra user accounts on the computer and installing Dropbox on each new user account. Thus affectively giving each user their own Dropbox account that is secured via his/her own password protected user account.
They are constantly rolling out new updates, so look for more features soon!
How Dropbox Online Backup Works Videos:
Signup for Dropbox Online Backup
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