Re: [tlug] Dropbox

[Martin G <ebisumartin@example.com>]

TLUG,

Just thought it worth mentioning Spideroak, since from what I gather on the interwebs that people who are into open source and privacy generally consider Spideroak a better alternative than Dropbox.

I use both at the moment.

Spideroak has better (theoretically) privacy policies, aspires to be open source, their pricing is better for their paid services, and they have combined encrypted back up service as well as synchronization (and public sharing). However, their interface sucks, at times it can be a CPU hog, and I've found it to be just a tiny bit buggy. I gave up synching because it wouldn't sync as fast as Dropbox.

Dropbox is more expensive than Spideroak, doesn't offer as much space, and is closed source. But it has great integration with Nautilus/Gnome, syncs everything super fast, and has been completely reliable for me. Also has an Android app that has saved me a few times by letting me grab some data when I wasn't able to get to my other computers.

So currently I use Spideroak just for an off-site encrypted backup of my entire home directory of my home computer. Takes a snapshot every hour of the changes.

I use Dropbox to synchronize work files between my home and laptop computers.

If Spideroak can solve its problems, then ideally I'd like to abandon Dropbox and just use Spideroak. It's just not quite one-stop shopping yet, though.

-- 
Dave M G