Is yours still working, @Noizyneighbour ?
Mine has now stopped working. It prompts for an upgrade, which says it needs Vista or higher. If you carry on, the program is still running but the dropbox directory is not updating anymore.
It looks like the win2000 compatibility mode fix has stopped working too…
I bet it doesnt work under MSDOS 6.2 either :)
Dropbox has, on its free version, just limited itself to three devices.
They don’t disconnect the extra ones if you have more than three signed in, but if you sign out they won’t let you sign in (with that device) until you sign out (and thus permanently disconnect) some of the others…
This is another really aggressive move from Dropbox. But they were forced to do it by not enough people paying for their premium service. Apparently only 10% of users pay.
It is pretty obvious that just about everybody will now move to Google Drive, which gives you way more space (15GB versus 2GB? on the free service) and no apparent device number limit. The user interface is a bit more clunky than Dropbox’s but is ok. I am using it now.
Of course Google will be scanning everything you put there, to see what you are into, but they will be doing that with gmail anyway 
The funny thing I found is that Dropbox doesn’t regard every device as a device. I have a load of Synology NAS network drives and Synology provides a free dropbox client for these, and these all continue to work and to sync, and they are not listed as connected devices in the dropbox account control panel. I don’t know why… it may be that the Synology client is an “app” and not a “device”.
And of course any machine on the same LAN can access the dropbox directory (folder) on the NAS, so you can have an unlimited number of machines connected to dropbox anyway. You just don’t get the right-click context menu (for getting the share link etc) on the NAS. And if you open the NAS to the outside so you get remote access to it (not a wise thing to do, generally) then you can access the dropbox folder from anywhere.
There are alternatives to Dropbox of course. There is Micro$oft’s Onedrive (I find it really clunky). And there are various self-hosted options, opening the way to unlimited free storage but potentially limited bandwidth. Synology offers one too, for free, and they have windoze, android and IOS clients. So you could have terabytes of storage “for free”. Just got to be careful with security – if security matters to you. NAS drives are routinely hacked and trashed; it is a standard teenage activity to trash insecure machines, along with searching for webcams in peoples’ houses and all the other stuff you don’t know (and don’t want to know) your kids are doing 
I think it is a bit odd to complain about a product that Dropbox provides for free. Or have I missed something?
Indeed, but they do provide it for free – as an inducement to buy the paid version presumably.
It is no different to discussing e.g. ATC services which we also don’t pay for (under 2T). Or discussing the Autorouter which is also free (to private users). Can you imagine the uproar if Achim dropped it, or something happened to him?
I posted the above because it may be a useful heads-up to some people. It is quite a nasty and sneaky move, because of the way it will shaft the user right when he is least able to deal with it. Probably when he has rebooted his device because something isn’t working…
In business, it is normal to overcharge etc, or charge for a software-enabled option. But appearing to be greedy needs to be avoided because customers will think you are, ahem, greedy.
A lot of pilots use dropbox to sync data while travelling, which is always a really bad time to screw somebody over.
But autorouter is a similar situation. What if Achim said you can file 3 flightplans a month for free, if you want unlimited you should pay
€10/month? People wouldn’t like it but how could you complain?
It is entirely his product and he can do what he likes with it. The user of a completely free product has no rights whatsoever.
ATC is an interesting point. There is a regulatory aspect which makes it different from dropbox or aurorouter. But why should I subsidise your use of ATC? Maybe a subject for another thread…
OK… I made that post as
Peter wrote:
They don’t disconnect the extra ones if you have more than three signed in, but if you sign out they won’t let you sign in (with that device) until you sign out (and thus permanently disconnect) some of the others…
I don’t see that you permanently disconnect the others? You can have three devices signed in at any one time but you can freely choose which three.
Peter wrote:
a heads-up for dropbox users, of whom reportedly 90% are using the free version, and lots of pilots use it
a comment on what is IMHO a predatory and opportunistic corporate practice
I get the heads up of course. I suppose I just don’t see a predatory or opportunistic practice. They presumably think that if someone is using their product on 4,5,6 devices, maybe they should be paying for it.
I think that branding a company and service that:
“predatory, opportunistic and arrogant” is misguided and unhelpful.
They deserve our thanks and support, like @achimha and @carlmeek, who do similar things for us.
