Ever been working on your laptop and needed something that you left at home on your desktop? I do it all the time. I think I have found my solution. Dropbox is a internet “cloud” service that allows you to set a folder on your workstation as your “dropbox”. Anything in that folder will sync to the internet anytime you have an internet connection. You can link multiple workstations to your account and it will keep that folder in sync between each workstation. Dropbox has a client for Windows, Mac and Linux.

The Dropbox service gives you 2GB of space for free, and you have the option to upgrade to a pro account for $9.99 a month or $99 a year. They will even give you an extra GB of space on your free account for referring someone to the service. I am currently just using the free service. I don’t think I would need more space but if I reach that point I will probably upgrade.

You start by going to Dropbox and choosing which platform you are using. In my case I was using Ubuntu Linux so I chose the client for Ubuntu 8.10. When you fist install the client on a workstation you choose where you want your dropbox to be, the service adds some random files just to give you some files to play with and test. You add items to that folder and they instantly begin to sync. What you put in the folder determines how long the sync with take. To start off I put about 150MB into the dropbox on my first workstation, it finished syncing with the Dropbox service in about ten minutes.

Once your main workstation is set up, you can now install the client on any other workstation that you want to sync with. When you install on a second workstation and put in your account information it will link that computer to your account. It will ask you to choose a location for your dropbox folder, once you choose a location files will begin to sync instantly. It took fifteen minutes for my 150GB Dropbox account to sync with my netbook over a 802.11G wireless connection.

Even if you don’t load the client onto a workstation you can still access your files using their website. When you log in to Dropbox you can manage your account and access anything that has already been synced. This makes it useful if you don’t have a workstation of your own and you need to get to you files. Also, Dropbox allows you to make files public. During installation you choose your dropbox location, the Dropbox service will automatically add a “Public” folder inside. Anything you put into this folder can be publicly accessed without logging in. The only thing is, you have to provide a link to someone for them to be able to access it. Another option is to create a shared folder, this is a pretty simple process. You select “Create Shared folder” and then give the email addresses of the people you would like to share with. Pretty straight forward.

I looked all over the site and in the forums and couldn’t find anything about a limit to the amount of computers that can be linked to one Dropbox account. Load the client onto anything possible and always have your important files available. The service seems to be pretty solid, I have it running on three computers at this time and I have not had any kind of issues.

If you need a way to keep files synced between multiple computers then I recommend you give Dropbox a try.