dropbox: file sharing/syncing across several machines

Keeping certain files in sync across several machines, since I work on many in different networks and locations, has always been an issue for me.

Having tried Webdav (too slow), rapidshare, diino... I settled on Subversion. Subversion does the job, but its for techies only, one has to commit/update and its a pity if one does not need the versioning.

Dropbox is a free solution (free up to 2GB, but not open source unfortunately).

• The installation on windows XP was easy, its easy to use, well integrated into windows.
• Ubuntu linux: there is an agent (See http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Dropbox ), but Its GUI based... I would have preferred a command line solution.

So lets try it out for a while, and keep an eye on an opensource alternative 'ubuntu one' (which is based on the interesting Couch DB). Ubuntu1 is opensource but only included with Ubuntu karmic 9.10 (desktop version), at the time of writing.

Dropbox- good stuff:

• Simple and easy to use. Free.
• Modifying a text file on two PCs in a dropbox at the same time caused a conflict, but each conficted copy was kept separate, which seems very useful.

Dropbox- Issues

• Not opensource :-)
• no linux command line client?
• The iphone app, while interesting, does not allow files to be edited, and cannot display many file types (excel, ppt).
  It would have been interested to edit to some todo text files from the phone for example)