Why I switched from Dropbox to Windows Live Mesh

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/why-i-switched-from-dropbox-to-windows-live-mesh/3512

by Garbage • 15 years ago

30 63 15 years ago

Kwpolska• 15 years ago

Run it on my XP/Linux desktop.

rfrey2• 15 years ago

"Author of more than 25 books on Microsoft Windows and Office, including the recently released Windows 7 Inside Out"(from his bio) suggests a Microsoft solution.

[edit: removed "tldr" tag because this was clearly not a summary but a mere snark.]

JonoW5• 15 years ago

Ad hominem

rfrey2• 15 years ago

<blush> It's true, it is.

This is a tangent, but an honest question. The biases and agenda of an argument's author are often essential to evaluating the argument. In the human world, a person would be pretty naive to not "consider the source".

Is it always invalid in written discourse to raise the issue of the author's background, or is there a way to do it that isn't ad hominem?

zeemonkee2• 15 years ago

So, if you read an article saying "Hire an SEO consultant today to improve your site visibility x100" and the author happens to be an SEO consultant, it would be an ad hominem to point this fact out ?

parfe3• 15 years ago

So? Motivation matters and it shows in his content.

I can trust that someone who profits directly from the Microsoft ecosystem will tell me to use Microsoft products.

This article is really two parts.

1) Why he is switching away from DropBox. Fair points, but none of it is new information that we haven't seen posted here 20 times the week the security vulnerability occurred.

2) Why he is switching to Live Mesh. This is an advertisement. It is not informative, it does not compare other syncing products, it does not add anything beyond the Live Mesh marketing information.

It isn't even a review of Live Mesh

eli3• 15 years ago

No.

A fair summary would be: Dropbox has had embarrassing security failures, plus Live Mesh has a few extra technical features and comes with more free space.

nathanappere5• 15 years ago

To me, going to Microsoft for security is like going to the desert for ice-cream. The article seems quite biased, since "embarassing security failures" tend to happen more often at Microsoft.

brudgers• 15 years ago

The author's familiarity with Windows doesn't make his argument that Microsoft is likely to provide better security weaker. Indeed if his story is to be believed, the fact that he initially used Dropbox might be seen as indication that he is aware of and in a position to evaluate Microsoft's security or lack thereof and that his decision to switch was based on knowledge rather than self-promotion.

mbesto• 15 years ago

He just spent a whole page talking about security issues and then never mentioned what security he is benefiting from by moving to Windows...

upthedale• 15 years ago

Simply put, I am not aware of any heavily publicised security breaches with Live Mesh like there have been Dropbox.

The impression I've had in recent times (something presumably shared by the article's author) is that security is something that Microsoft takes very seriously these days. That has happened out of necessity, originally precipitated by security flaws in the Windows line of OS. But at least they've already learnt that security is a serious issue and tightened things up - something dropbox (and other players from recent hacking scandals) are only just learning.

maineldc• 15 years ago

That's not true. He mentioned that for sensitive documents you can use Windows Live Mesh without Skydrive and have the equivalent of Dropbox's LAN sync without having your sensitive documents in the cloud.

Is it just me, or is this a killer feature? I had no idea this was baked into Live Mesh. I use rsync for this today but I am definitely going to check out Live Mesh.

Derbasti4• 15 years ago

In theory, yes. The recent news about Dropbox are not encouraging. The thing is, here is a list of things I need from a syncing service:

* Reliability. No fucking up my files, please.

* Low Maintenance. It should just work, basically.

* Cross Platform. I need to work reliably on Win, Lin, OSX. And at the same time, too.

Anything else is just bonus. If you know a syncing service besides Dropbox that satisfies all three of these, please let me know!

Oh, and bonus points for iOS/Android integration.

soofaloofa• 15 years ago

SpiderOak?

Derbasti4• 15 years ago

How is it better than Dropbox?

(This is not a snarky remark, I am really interested! How long have you used it? For what?)

stuff4ben2• 15 years ago

I installed SpiderOak on my Mac when the Dropbox security failures came to light a couple weeks ago. SpiderOak is just plain confusing and hard to use. I think I setup a folder to sync but with all of the options and "features" it has, I really don't know what is being synced or not. I'm a software developer by trade, and if I find it this confusing, I would definitely not recommend it to regular people. I'm going to give Live Mesh a shot and see how it works.

rakkhi• 15 years ago

http://www.wuala.com/ hits all 3 and much better security. Or wait for iOS5 and apps to add all types of file sync on iCloud.

sirn• 15 years ago

My two biggest complaints about Wuala is that its client is written Java and occasionally eats up all my memory (even with -Xmx256m, though I believe this is Java's fault rather than Wuala), the interface is a bit hard to understand and there's no background mode like how Dropbox stays on menu bar in OSX. Apart from these two complaint, I'm pretty happy with the service enough to delete my (paid) Dropbox account for equivalent package on Wuala.

joejohnson2• 15 years ago

Would you consider requiring a password for access to your files a bonus? For me, this "feature" is a deal-breaker.

Derbasti4• 15 years ago

I would not mind to enter my password once after starting my computer. In fact, I do that right now with Espoinage (a somewhat TrueCrypt-like software).

I don't want to enter my password every time I want to access one of my files. I am usually always working inside my Dropbox, so that would be a deal-breaker.

ern• 15 years ago

He makes one very good suggestion:

At the very minimum, Dropbox needs to have a thorough security audit from an independent group to ensure that it has the processes in place to back up those promises.

Call it security theatre, a waste of time and resources, or whatever you want, but I would find this very reassuring as a Dropbox user, and it would help me to trust the service again. That, and an independent verification of their claims about the number of users possibly affected by the no-password security bug.

eli3• 15 years ago

I would bet on this being one of the outcomes of the class action lawsuit against them.

mattyohe2• 15 years ago

"Why I switched from Dropbox to Windows Live Mesh"

Because I am a Microsoft shill.

rodh257• 15 years ago

So you think his other reasons for swapping aren't valid? Or do you think that there is a compelling reason not to use Live Mesh if you want to switch from Dropbox?

mattyohe2• 15 years ago

I got in dropbox very early and they initially gave out 5GB of space, so I have that. His other points are not very interesting.

__rkaup__• 15 years ago

More technical people like us can just use Tarsnap.

ch0wn• 15 years ago

Basically yes, but it would still require a lot of customization to have a similar experience to that of Dropbox.

Derbasti4• 15 years ago

The thing is, Tarsnap in and of itself is only a backup, but does not sync. And sync really is what makes Dropbox so great.

amitutk• 15 years ago

I have used both Dropbox and Live Mesh, both work fine for me.

Advantages for Live Mesh: * Free quota is 5 Gb * I can choose the folder I want to sync, so my existing folder structure need not be tweaked

Advantages for Dropbox: * It is more popular so it is easier to set up a shared folder with someone.

Juniper• 15 years ago

As suggested recently by 'How To Geek' I have installed Boxcryptor in my dropbox folder.

Boxcryptor was obviously inspired by Dropbox's limitations and as far as I can see solves them perfectly with encryption of every file at the client end.

Dropbox simply stores and syncs these encrypted files.

The linked article says : 'Ultimately, I’ve come to the conclusion that scale matters in the cloud. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have the experience and the engineering depth to get operational and security issues right.'

Until a little while ago I wonder if the author would have objected to Sony being added to that list?

pragmatic• 15 years ago

I don't think of Sony when I think of "the cloud".

However - Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are major players and most people do think of these guys when it comes to cloud storage. Amazon is of course the gold standard and Google is trusted. Microsoft is kinda sort there.

moozeek• 15 years ago

As an alternative I have never seen Powerfolder (http://www.powerfolder.com) mentioned here, and that's a pity. Powerfolder surely is not a nice and shiny start up (German private company, since 2003), but it has worked for us for over 3 or 4 years now. As I understand Powerfolder originally was a client to just sync files and folders across computers but they added "cloud storage" a few years ago, so your devices need not be connected at the same time. The Java client works an Windows, Mac and Linux, it's "functionally" designed, to say it politely (no shiny icons) You can sync backup or share any file or folder on your computer. I've tested nearly all sync and backup services but none of them made me switch, Powerfolder's sync speed and reliability is just superior (they can LAN sync too). And heck if you don't trust "the cloud" you can just buy their server software and set it up on your own hardware.

I still use Dropbox for easy private file sharing, just not professionally.

[Edit: ,just NOT professionally]

c4urself• 15 years ago

It's interesting that my "emotional" reaction is to favor Dropbox to Windows... I like the brand, the entrepreneur in me is naturally inclined to cheer for the startup versus the corporate giant and I've been telling people about Dropbox making me somewhat more vested in it. That said, security issues _are_ affecting your image Dropbox. Please fix these and I'll keep loving you and have no reason to switch.

m4tt• 15 years ago

Shame Windows Live Mesh doesn't work on Lion. I would have liked to try it.

radarsat1• 15 years ago

It really kind of blows my mind that anyone is willing to use these kinds of cloud-storage tools without their own personal layer of encryption in-between. I've used Dropbox with encfs in the past, and didn't bat an eye when their usage terms changed, because although they were storing my data, they do not have my data. Without something like encfs, you're just literally giving other people your personal files--I don't understand that on any level.

sunchild• 15 years ago

Don't you lose the key features of Dropbox as a service: de-dup, sync, share, etc.? In that case, why not just store your stuff directly in S3 and cut out the middle man?

petervandijck• 15 years ago

You don't understand Google docs then either. Or people emailing passwords. Basically, these things are not risky anymore than flying a plan is risky.

endtime• 15 years ago

I used Live Mesh once. Then, out of the blue, after a reboot reboot it started deleting all my files. I got in touch with the Live Mesh team and was told that I should remove files with unsupported extensions (WTF?) from my synced folders and see if my files came back. I think they were eventually able to recover some, but not all, of the stuff that was lost. This was early 2009, so maybe the client has improved since then, but I can't bring myself to trust it.

JamieEi• 15 years ago

I used Live Mesh from launch up until about a year ago and had similar experiences. Lots of sync errors, lots of pain upgrading when MS decided to shuffle Live Mesh over to the Windows Live team.

On the other hand, Dropbox has been incredibly reliable and easy to use, plus it works on Android and Linux.

stuff4ben2• 15 years ago

So I'm trying out LiveMesh on my Mac right now. Installation was easy and so was setting up the sync folder. I copied about 100MB of source code into the folder and it started syncing right away. However, it's just killing my CPU. I have a Core i5 MBP and CPU utilization is 100%-130%. Memory usage is quite low at ~70MB. I don't recall Dropbox killing my CPU like this when doing a simple sync. I wonder if it's doing some sort of encryption?

joejohnson2• 15 years ago

Why do people split articles into multiple pages like this? Does this increase ad revenue somehow?

greyman• 15 years ago

Yes.

Why I switched from Dropbox to Windows Live Mesh

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