Box.net, your online Documents folder

Filed under: Business, Internet, Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Windows Mobile, Palm, Productivity, Web services, Commercial

Box.net, your online Documents folder

by Victor Agreda, Jr. Oct 14th 2005

Whether it's Documents, My Documents, or whatever, Box.net can store it. While I'm a little surprised the box industry didn't grab the domain first, I'm more surprised by the functionality within Box.net's simple interface. Box is another web-based storage solution, a "place for your stuff" online. What makes Box.net different than some other online storage solutions? Choices and ease-of-use.

You can save from Mac, Windows, even Linux. No biggie, as most others do this via the standard web app. Box includes a Java applet as an option. The applet allows you to simply drag-n-drop your files, which worked flawlessly on my machines. If you want to share your documents, that's easily accomplished with a few clicks, but there are options here as well. How about RSS feeds? They'll let you automagically update files to subscribers when you update them. That's a cool thing... Box has a mobile site as well, operational with "Blackberries, Palm Treos, Sidekicks, PocketPCs, and more." If anyone tries this with a Palm LifeDrive, I'd love to know if you can move files with it. More after the jump.

As for the simplicity, most operations are either two-click onscreen affairs or a small dialog box. You can, for instance, add tags and descriptions to your data via dialog box. I don't see a way to aggregate your data on a regular basis, so that'd be nice. The simple search feature works well, although it is limited by being unable to search inside docs (like OS X's searching inside PDF's).
boxnetui

There's a button for zipping files as well, which I assume you'd want to do if you got low on storage. A small meter at the bottom of most screens indicates your data usage, and I had no problem throwing MP3's and videos onto it. Still under 10% at this point.

Some other features (why do I find myself wishing they had a bulleted list? am I that brainwashed by PowerPoint?) include email file uploads, email backups (via forwarding), and workgroups (sub-accounts) for ad-hoc private groups.

I couldn't get the online photos to work, but I was probably doing something wrong. The interface is easy, but that's not to say it couldn't use some work. In fact, if you blended this with some Ajaxian desktop metaphor UI, you'd have a pretty sweet tool. But I digress. Another malfunctioning part was ftp access, though it's only disabled for new users. They say to check back in a couple of weeks...

All this will set you back $2.99 per month for one gig of storage. That's the monthly option. Remember, I said choices. There's a student account for $15 a year with 500 MB of storage, while the yearly normal account is $24.99 for 1 GB. Sadly, there is no free trial. But if there were, I'm sure this would all be in beta...

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

j cranford said 5:21PM on 10-14-2005

any free options in this catagory ? I use my Gmail account to backup my emergency USB drive, but i can only send 10 mb at a time.

Nizam Rahman said 9:44PM on 10-14-2005

I use the Gmail option too. Sure would like to see some free options.

Aaron said 10:16PM on 10-14-2005

Just found out about the review, thanks! Regarding why it's not free: We have found the response to be much better when people pay a nominal fee and then they DON'T have to see messy ads or things getting in between them and their files. Keep in mind, also, that many companies that have offered this type of service for free are now out of business. We think people's files are a bit too important for that.

You can always refer any other questions to support@box.net

Thanks!

retro said 9:17PM on 10-15-2005

Yeah, it's great. I one a year-long 1gb account from Engadget sometime in August. Very handy, considering I can't bring GDrive everywhere. :P

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