So am I a technical guru like ShareChair? Is that part of my branding?
My first technical post (#2 EVER) got no likes. (That’s good English!) I was so desperate for comments, In order to practice chatting, I kept the best of the spam, and responded to it. I rejoiced when I bandied three times with a spammer!
In this upgraded post I’m going to condense the information, and republish because it was useful to me when I learned about these products. I hope you enjoy it. If not, just press like! hahaha Or you can go to my FB fan page and check out the good-looking cowboys riding around Bravo Lake and LIKE them at TC History Gal Productions!
Not all technology eliminates frustration and irritation from my life (understatement of the century), but for the most part these two applications do. Although I use Google Docs almost daily, I should be a Dropbox salesperson. $0. X 100% commission =???
Dropbox and Google both store documents on the web and have different benefits, but personally I prefer Dropbox for most uses because of the following reasons.
1) Google has good products, but they do not have all the flexibility of either Microsoft Word or Apple Pages. Dropbox uses whatever software you are using.
2) I have had people complain that they couldn’t open a Google Doc. Most people say they receive and can open up a document that I send them from Dropbox.
3) You have to log in to use Google Docs, and that can take more time that I want to spend. I’m not in the TWITCH generation, but I have become accustomed to instant. Dropbox gives me instant use offline.
4) With Google I seem to end up with revisions in my “Google Drive” with the same name as the original documents. It doesn’t take much to confuse me.
5) Another problem I have with Google and other cloud-only applications I blame on my internet provider. Rural America, where I live, is internet-challenged. When you reach the service limit, the provider puts the brakes on the internet speed. Slow speed means that Google Docs can’t keep up with 25 WPM plus error erasing typing speed, resulting in letters and even words left out of an original document. The solution is to upload a document created offline when your internet quota is recharged.
6) Individual Google Docs can exceed its megabyte limit if the document has several pictures. Dropbox has a limit if you haven’t earned extra storage units or upgraded, but unless you reach that limit, individual documents save with no problem.
In spite of my love for Dropbox, there are some things that Google does better.
1) Dropbox changes are not visible until you save and sync your document. Your collaborator sees the old document, until they close, and reopen it ONLINE. Google changes are instantaneous. You can have several people online all doing the editing and chatting at the same time.
2) I had an another experience in which several of us were taking notes on an agenda created in a joint Dropbox folder. My notes wrote over someone else’s notes, and his were gone, and all Dropbox had to say about it was “Marsha’s corrupted copy” Both of us had a red face. Mine was embarrassed, hers was not!
3) I have nearly run out of space with Dropbox. The free version is limited to 5 GB. If you get your friends to use Dropbox you earn more space. You can open another Dropbox account using a different email account, but you don’t have the same convenience as you do with your primary account that is downloaded to all your computers. I have never run out of space with Google Docs.
Since I wrote this article I discovered that there are other cloud solutions like Dropbox. All the ones I’ve checked out have a 5 gigabyte storage limit unless you upgrade. This article compares the top 10 companies.
I hope this old article was helpful. 🙂 If not, I’ll change my brand tomorrow! 🙂
Marsha Ingrao - Always Write 
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