Dropbox Infinite Puts Your Entire Cloud On Your Desktop
Although there are terabytes of storage space available in large boxes, severs, and contraptions, most consumer computers still come with at most 1 TB of space, especially in laptops and 2-in-1 tablets. Cloud storage services like Dropbox expands that almost infinitely and also solves the problem of collaboration as well. But accessing those files in the cloud is still cumbersome and can pretty much break your flow. With Dropbox Infinite, the most popular cloud provider aims to answer that problem as well, allowing any user full access to their 10 TB online storage as if they were installed on their 1 TB desktop.
On the desktop, accessing Dropbox files can be done in two ways. You can access them through the file manager, Explorer on Windows or Finder on OS X, but only if the file has been synced, which means it takes up space on your hard drive. Alternatively, you can go on a web browser to access those files, which are still stored only online. Neither method is ideal and doesn't really scale to the fast-paced workflows that today demands from workers.
Enter Dropbox Infinite, a seemingly magical way that bridges the two methods, practically increasing your local storage to near infinitesimal amounts, hence the name. Or at least as much Dropbox storage you have in your subscription. Like the offline method, you can view your Dropbox files still through your file manager, as if they were really stored locally. However, they are really still only stored online and take up absolutely no space on your hard drive. Here's the magical part, however. You don't need to do anything to open those files. Simply access them as if they were local, like double click to open, and the file opens in the associated local app, automatically syncing in the background. You can even move files around like you would any other file and everything is automatically synced to Dropbox.
You can still take your files offline with you if you choose, which is handy if you're going offline for some time and it would behave as before. Of course, now those files will take up space, at least until you decide to take the files online only again.
Dropbox Infinite admittedly could change the way cloud storage is seen. Most approach it as something akin to having an external storage drive in the cloud, accessed separately and independently of the computer's main storage. With this latest Dropbox project, cloud storage is seemingly and seamlessly integrated into local storage. Dropbox Infinite has already been deployed to a select few customers for testing and is heavily oriented towards business Dropbox users. Hopefully, the feature will eventually make its way to regular users as well.
SOURCE: Dropbox