Dropbox 1.0 available with performance enhancements, Selective Sync

Why so great? How about - with selective syncing - access to (not a copy of) every pic, vid, doc, and on some iDevices, every spreadsheet, presentation, etc. you've ever saved from wherever you are.

I went with SugarSync for my "big backup" ($14.99/mo or for 100 GB - cut to $12.50 if you buy by the year), and I'll soon upgrade to 250 GB @ $24.99 ($20.83 on the yearly plan). It has tons of features (see below), and uploaded my stuff painlessly (if slower than DropBox) but while ranking highly with reviewers, some user reviews have reported a variety of problems in trying to do a total restore and less than stellar customer support. Hope I don't find out I made a mistake the hard way!

I'm a gen or two behind, tho' ('til the next MBP rev!), and there's no Tiger client for SugarSync, so I have a free DropBox account between my Mac and PC tower for my writing. And I can access the latest version of any file from my Sugarsync on my Mac - and on any connected computer in the world through the web interface. (Which you can also do with DropBox) - in a much more accessible fashion than trying to find a gMail you attached something to six months ago.

I believe this possibly-save-your-bacon feature (ubiquitous file access) also works (in both programs) with your iDevices. (WiFi and my notebook have given me as much web access as I need to date, so also late to the super-smart phone game watching the device classes sort themselves out).

SugarSync also has some unique features which best meet my particular needs. I live in two separate households in different states and keeping my files in sync between the two, not to mention between my notebook and tower, has given me fits, and neither Carbonite or Mozy gave me a workable solution, so I've been dragging a big hard drive with me in my suitcase - always worrying about its being in my suitcase and intact after the flight - meaning I had to make that drive primary and then keep copying the entire contents to both computers periodically. (That played hob with my iTunes Library when the tower decided to change drive letter assignments for one fun problem, not to mention being slow, requiring numerous steps, and too dicey for a program like Retrospect which is not designed for multi-computer restore.)

A single Sugar Sync account recognizes multiple computers easily, doesn't care what's on what drive, and with its Magic Briefcase feature, synchronizes selected files between multiple computers. Now I'm making the internal storage primary on each computer, have a separate ext. HDD for each location for a secondary back-up, and only have to take my notebook on the plane, arriving to a main computer in either location that always has the latest version of all my files. And my data's offsite in the event of some disaster or theft which takes out my drives at either home site.

And that's pretty great.

I have a question too. I'm slightly unnerved that (unlike Sugar Sync which is invisible in the Finder or Win Explorer) everything I back up in DropBox has to be IN my DropBox. I know (I think) that I have a local copy of each file on each computer with the client, but I still worry that if something went wrong with my DropBox client on either machine - or with the home DropBox site - it might drain all those files off of all my machines.

Any comments?

I had a similar incident with my bookmarks on FoxMarks. A friend was using my computer and somehow wiped out all my bookmarks on that machine with a single bookmark he saved. No prob I thought, I'll restore them from FoxMarks, but instead, as I logged in onto another machine it was only to watch all my bookmarks disappear from that one too as X-Marks started syncing! Luckily I had them on a third. I disconnected all the machines except that one and was able to make it the primary and re-propagate four years of bookmarks back to the others, but it was a close call.