A quick roundup of iOS text editors with Dropbox support

I'd like to see the same comparison for apps that can edit Google docs.

I'm a graphic artist, not a tech blogger, and I've found Dropbox to be the easiest way to exchange files with my clients and vendors. It's easier than MobileMe, YouSendIt, Boxnet, ftp sites or any other solution I've seen or worked with.

Well, I'm not into blog postings at all but do use dropbox for numerous things, not the least for 1password syncing, worklogging, documentation of frequently done tasks, sharing mindmaps with others and so on. Apple is not going to attract users for MobileMe who are already using DropBox. The current popularity of DropBox should make Apple wonder about what's actually can be improved with MobileMe.

I used to work in an Apple Store and I still have a free MobileMe account. I also have a free Dropbox account. I use MobileMe for its syncing services and I have used the FindMyiPhone feature.

Dropbox is considerably better than iDisk and even pokes a stick at MM's Gallery feature. It's a great product.

I would consider paying for Dropbox but I don't really use it enough to justify it. Maybe some day. I would not pay the current going rate for MobileMe. When mine expires I'll probably just let it die and jump on my girlfriend's family account for the small bit I use.

I've been using PlainText since it went live, and I've found an interesting way to use it that's perfect for my needs.

I'm making story notes, so inside my project's folder I created folders for different types of notes: People, places, events, etc. Inside of those folders, I'm creating a new folder for every person, place, whatever. Inside those folders I'm creating files, but I'm using my brief notes as the file names, and only adding any contents to the file when I feel the need to elaborate or copy in some relevant research.

For example, I have a character called Nick. If I need to look something up I go to Project/People/Nick/. Inside that folder are a number of files with names like "Thirty something" and "Ex-Military". Every different thing I want to note about Nick gets its own file like that.

Because of the way PlainText works, I can be editing my story, call up the sidebar, and navigate to Nick's folder to check on things, all without leaving the file I'm editing. Only if I need to get into the deeper info within the note file do I need to open it.

Plaintext has taken the place of several separate apps for me, simply because it is so fast and simple to use. It's also free (the ads are actually hidden by the keyboard when typing, so they're not a big deal), so I can't recommend it highly enough.

Interesting, I have a MobileMe account, and I still use DropBox. It works better, and it's free, so why wait for Apple to get it's act together when a great solution already exists?

I use quick office. It does word and excel files and let's you do anything you want offline

I'm going to grandstand a little for Notebooks. This is an iPad only app (there is no way in hell you'd get me to take on NaNoWriMo with an iPhone keyboard), and is to my mind the most useful notebook app I've come across so far.

Notebooks will not sync with DropBox, which might make it useless to some, but it has many other sync options. For instance, I use its WebDAV sync engine to keep my files backed up wirelessly to my home system.

You do not have to sync with anything to use Notebooks. It's perfectly happy to work as a standalone editor.

Notebooks allows you to create categories (notebooks) that contain any number of files, not all of which have to be plan text. It can read HTML, PDF, and RTF, though for editing it's plain-text only - a known limitation in the iOS that hopefully Apple will address eventually.

I've had Notebooks for perhaps four months now, and I've used it to write something on the order of half a million words (really). It's robust, fast, as minimal as you want it to be, and provides sorting, renaming, deleting, and security options I haven't seen mentioned in any other iOS text editor package. It gets out of your way when you want it to, but provides some nice subtleties when you need them, such as word count, and the option to combine notes into one larger text file.

If you're really looking for a writer's tool, give Notebooks a look - it's my go-to text cruncher of choice.

Docs2Go also lets you save to DropBox, Google docs, Mobile Me, and more. It's a bit more expensive than others though. I also have Elements and love DropBox. :)

Gazoobee: as others have mentioned, why would MobileMe preclude the use of Dropbox? I have MobileMe and use it for iSync across my devices, for the Find-My-iOS-Device feature, and as a WebDAV space for OmniFocus.

However, I *also* have Dropbox. iDisk, especially its offline support, is terrible, has been ever since it was introduced and will likely continue to do so. (WebDAV is a very slow protocol to use for full-disc syncs, so unless Apple develops a new protocol, both server- and client-side, it'll be difficult to improve. Dropbox uses a very efficient proprietary protocol that compresses and only transfers the minimum delta possible.) After suffering with it for years, I finally gave up and installed Dropbox, and wondered why I waited so long. Dropbox is infinitely faster and more reliable than iDisk, and the base plan is free and provides a useful amount of space.

Simply put, your attitude means you're missing out on a truly excellent service that has revolutionized how I manage my files.