Making the best use of Dropbox
 

I recently discovered Dropbox, and I searched for and read all the FT threads in which it is mentioned. I know there are other such utilities, but I think Dropbox is just what I've been looking for to allow me to grab my travel laptop and go, without the old routine of backing up everything that I thought I might need while travelling onto an external hard drive... or the older solution - subscribe to GoToMyPC ... etc.

In just my first few days of using Dropbox, I've decided on a few things that will optimize its usefulness for me. These come to mind:

1) Relabelling the desktop icon from "Dropbox" to "Run Dropbox." This reminds me that it does not merely open the Dropbox folder, it starts the syncing process, which is not necessarily what I want running all the time.

2) Turning off (that is, unchecking the option) starting Dropbox at startup. That is, I want to run it manually when I want to run it. The reason for this is that both my desktop computer and my travel laptop computer are sometimes on in the house in the same time (with someone other than me using the travel laptop), and I think it could be a nightmare to have both computers trying to keep in sync constantly.

Do any other Dropbox users have any tips for how to best use it?

Dropbox detects local LAN and syncs over the lan instead of net, works perfect. I use it exactly FOR this reason.

Thanks, Steph3n. I didn't know that. Still reading my way through the Dropbox forum threads for insights.

I think (fingers crossed) I've just succeeded in doing two things I've really been hoping to be able to do with Dropbox: keep my Favorites and RSS feeds synced on both computers. Quick, before I forget how I did it:

On home computer:

Favorites:
-- moved Favorites into Dropbox folder (I used regedit, but could have used TweakUI also).
-- opened IE7 and saw no Favorites listed :eek:
-- googled around and found this was probably due to the Favorites folder having lost its system attribute. The fix for this is the following dos command:
ATTRIB -S C:\Documents and Settings\cubbie\My Documents\My Dropbox\Favorites /S /D
-- back to IE7 and Favorites list is back :)

Feeds:
-- didn't know how to move Feeds folder with regedit and it doesn't seem to be an option in TweakUI
-- went to Feeds folder location, right-clicked, dragged into Dropbox folder, selected Move Here option
-- opened IE7 and saw no Feeds listed :eek:
-- above system attribute command was not the fix
-- googled around and found I had to reimport Feeds into IE7. Noticed that when I moved Feeds folder to Dropbox, a file called feeds.opml had also been placed in Dropbox
-- in IE7, File > Import and Export ... > Import Feeds, selected the feeds.opml in the Dropbox folder
-- back to IE7 and Feeds list is back :)

On travel computer:

Favorites:
- with TweakUI, Special Folders, select as location C:\Documents and Settings\cubbie\My Documents\My Dropbox\Favorites
-- go to IE7 and yes, all the Favorites are there :)

Feeds
-- in IE7, File > Import and Export > Import Feeds, selected feeds.opml in the Dropbox folder
-- go to IE& and yes, the feeds are there :)

Just thought some of you out there might find this helpful.