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Google Drive iOS app won't aloow you to upload photos to your G-Drive. Major fail!

Round 6: Only one of these will impugn your right to privacy.

I've got lots of iPad apps that let me sync to DropBox. I don't remember any that sync to Google.
That's not just a knockout -- that's like DropBox calling in a few dozen heavyweight friends that all jump on Google Drive and pound him while they hold him down.

Dropbox allows me to host my website free of charge! Major win!

Dropbox had a brief service outage this morning.

None of these cloud services are ready for primetime. Maybe in ten years, but certainly not today. Look at the recent Amazon AWS debacle that affected Instagram, Pinterest and Netflix.

Keep your data local if you want reliable access to it.

 cv, on 03 July 2012 - 08:28 AM, said:

The debacle of one of the worst storms hitting the east coast in years that knocked out power initially to four million people, and the Amazon's data centers had just a few hours of downtime in a few locations? That one?

Great article, just a comment. You should talk about the LAN sync option (Dropbox).

Article implies that Pack Rat feature of Dropbox is included in a paid account. It's not. I've got a paid account and Dropbox wants an additional $39 a year to activate it (I understand why, I just think article should mention it.)

Also, Dropbox has bandwidth limits for file I make available publicly, does Google have these? What are the limits for each?

 Manre, on 03 July 2012 - 08:34 AM, said:

That's in the full Dropbox review. For many people, LAN sync isn't make or break, because it requires a specific set of circumstances. It's great in an office place, and it's perfect for me and my two computers at home (desktop and laptop).

 kevinv, on 03 July 2012 - 08:40 AM, said:

Terribly sorry: my account suppressed the Pack Rat upgrade fee, and in searching, I find that Dropbox doesn't disclose the price except when you are a free account holder and use an upgrade option to pay for an account. It is $40 per year for that additional feature on top of the existing paid fees. However, I don't think it's a serious issue in the comparison, as Google offers nothing comparable, and the per month rate is roughly $3. Google's storage is clearly cheaper to begin with.

On the bandwidth limit front, Dropbox says it monitors usage of publicly shared files, and has an automatic halt at 20 GB per day for free account and 200 GB per day for paid account (whether Pro or Team). Google doesn't post a limit, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have one.

I should have noted (in the already long article) that the current version of Google Drive lacks any option to throttle upstream and downstream throughput, unlike Dropbox, which has separate settings for transfers up and down.

I have tried Google Drive on my Macbook Pro and also an XP desktop. Both were disappointing. On my Macbook Pro it had a terrible time uploading them and skipping some jpg files. I had to "quit" Google Drive and then restart it so it would actually upload the files. On my XP machine whenever I tried to open the one file it kept crashing my desktop. I finally uninstalled it. Dropbox has been working without fail for me for a couple years. Google Drive has some bugs to work out of the system before I will switch over. Since making use of Dropbox's camera upload feature I now have 7.2 GB on my Dropbox.

And the winner is: Skydrive. That is, I'm using Skydrive (I have no idea how it stacks up against the others). (I just never got into Dropbox, and I'm staying as far from the Google monster as I can.)
--John Baxter

 Glenn_Fleishman, on 03 July 2012 - 08:54 AM, said:

Oh yeah, it's an advantage to Dropbox and looks like a good feature if you need it (I backup my dropbox with crashplan & time machine so get some versioning and deletion protection that way. I figured that was enough paranoia to pay for.)