Dropbox is a file synchronization service available for multiple platforms. The service offers free accounts that allow up to 2GB of storage space. For those of you needing more, upgrade plans are available. The clients are light weight and run in the background.

One of the nice features of the system is the file monitoring kicks off the sync on every save. The process Is very quick because the system transfers only the file changes rather than the whole file.

This is all great but the feature that won me over is the new iPhone app that allows access to all the files in your sync folder. Photos, word docs, PDFs and more are all available through this app.

Contrasting the app to other tools such as DataViz’ Documents To Go  and box.net, Dropbox provides most the the same features better and cheaper. Honestly I found Documents To Go to cumbersome and expensive. The sync mechanism requires the iphone to be on the same wireless network as the host system. Additionally all the documents are downloaded to the iPhone, thus taking up space. Dropbox is internet based allowing you to access your documents regardless of network access method and loading only the document you’re interested in. Box.net does provided some of the same features as Dropbox but lacked the seamless file system integration. When I reviewed box.net the process required you to upload the documents manually to the server to be shared. While there is webdav integration, there was no local copy for off-line use. Dropbox manages the synchronization of files between computers behind the scenes providing local copies for offline use. 

I’m impressed with Dropbox’s seamless and cost effective sync solution. Check it our for yourself.