The World’s Best Free Software Reviewed

In mid-September, the file sync-and-store service Dropbox came out of private beta, boasting smooth file synchronization between computers and across platforms. I gave it a try on Windows and Ubuntu Linux, and I was quite impressed by what I found.

Dropbox is part online storage, part data back-up, part file-sharing, and part data synchronization. After you install the free program, the Dropbox icon appears in your system tray. Click on the icon to open the “My Dropbox” folder. All the contents of this folder are automatically synchronized with the Dropbox servers and any other computer you have Dropbox installed on. The files in that folder are then available on your other computers or through the Dropbox website. The folder acts like any other folder on your computer, and it also shows up in your My Documents or Home folder.

As soon as you drag and drop a file to the Dropbox folder, it will show up on your other computer or online with a loading icon next to it, indicating that the sync is in process. As soon as the green check mark appears beside the file, it is all synchronized. I tried this syncing process out with a few dozen files, both small and big, and it worked seamlessly. Even very large files transferred quickly and smoothly, both on my Windows machine and on my Linux computer.

The free Dropbox service syncs up to 2GB of data, and the company plans on offering larger storage for a fee. There is no limit to file size in the Dropbox client, although files transferred through the web are capped at 350MB.

Dropbox is more than simple online storage, however. If you accidentally alter or delete a file, you can recover previous versions because it tracks all the changes made to the files. Dropbox also has some file-sharing capabilities: if you create a folder and share it with another Dropbox user, all the files in that folder are synced to all the users. You determine which files stay private and which can be shared. You can also make files publicly available by putting them in the public folder in My Dropbox. There is also a special Photos folder in My Dropbox that displays photos in a gallery. You can send a link to anyone so they can see that gallery on the Dropbox website.

Overall, I am quite impressed with Dropbox. It might not be the best data back-up solution for everyone because you have to keep all the files in the My Dropbox folder. But it has some great sharing features, and being able to sync files across Windows, Mac, and Linux is huge. For people who have multiple computers with different operating system, Dropbox might be just the thing for you.

Peter

Google Chrome touts itself as a completely new browsing experience, built from the ground up to meet the needs and challenges of a modern, content-rich Internet. The Chrome team even published a comic book explaining all of the technical and security improvements that they made. For me, those things are fine and good, but unless the browser is fast, easy to use, and looks good, I won’t use it. I took Google Chrome for a test drive to see how it performed doing every day tasks.

Here’s a round-up of the Google Chrome features.

• Drag-and-drop tabbed browsing — tabs can be dragged out of windows or combined into a single window
• Enhanced Javascript engine (called V8) that runs complicated web pages more efficiently
• Each tab is its own process, so if one tab crashes the others are unaffected
• “Incognito” mode that hides your web history and blocks cookies
• Built-in Google Gears for offline access to web services
• Shortcuts you can place on your desktop that will launch an independent window to any web service, like your email, calendar, etc.
• An “Omnibar” that can be used to type in url’s as well as perform searches. The Omnibar also remembers everything you type for later.
• A new tab start page that shows your top 9 most visited sites and a list of your most frequent searches.
• Pop-ups are suppressed unless you choose to drag out the pop-up window
• Download manager controls downloads from the bottom of the window

Some of those features should seem familiar. Almost all those features are currently available in Firefox, either built-in or through add-ons. But it’s nice to see Google incorporate these popular features automatically. It also makes sense for Google to incorporate search into the url bar, although some might not like this option due to privacy issues. For people who use a lot of Google services (like Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, etc.) Chrome will integrate seemlessly with those services.

I thought Chrome was very usable, and I liked the clean, minimalistic look and feel. I appreciate Google’s work on speed and security, but I still wouldn’t use it if it didn’t look good. Even though it is one of the simplest features, I thought the new tab page was one of the better features, and no other browser has a feature just like it.

Google Chrome is open source, so at some point it will have add-ons like Firefox. But Google warns that the add-ons might compromise some of its security design, so we’ll have to wait and see how Google makes it all work. For me, the ability to freely customize my browser is an absolute must. Chrome is pretty responsive, although it wasn’t as fast on my computer (a Dell Inspiron) than many people have reported, and the scrolling was somewhat jerky. I would place it a little behind Firefox 3 in speed, especially with lots of tabs open, but the difference is slight. My first impression is that Chrome is nothing earth-shaking, but it is a great start for a brand new browser.

Peter

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