Yeah, it's not the $99 that is the problem, it is that it buys you 50GB. The most valuable digital data I have is baby/kid photos, video etc. They are truly irreplaceable (to me, anyway), and I wouldn't mind some convenient way to do off-site backup rather than lugging rsynced disks around, but 50GB is not enough to back it up.
As for syncing and sharing project files, that is what the git repository is for.
But quite obviously there is a market for what they sell. I'm just not in that market. Not until I can get half a TB for my $99, anyway.
I have the same problem. I have almost 100 gigs of photos which are the majority of my backup needs.
Flickr's been an somewhat easy way to back them up and share them at the same time. But I have growing frustration with Flickr because I'm really using it for three different purposes now: backing up all my photos, sharing family snapshots with friends and family, and sharing more artsy photography with mostly strangers (which is really Flickr's sweet spot).
Using Flickr for backup is incredibly annoying and iffy because their uploaders are so fragile and downloading the entire collection depends on third-party software that Flickr could break or disable at any moment.
I'd love to move my photo backups off of Flickr and am close to using just some rotating USB hard drives, but I'd much rather have something automated. Dropbox could definitely have my business there and be price competitive if they offered say 250 gigs for under $100 a year. Backing up my photos should be a good profit for them over time, because once I get past the initial backup, I really only upload a gig or two a month and rarely download. Unlike my other documents, I don't need my photo backup replicated between my different computers running Dropbox.
Sharing photos with friends and family is something that Dropbox could be good at or at least acceptable. The Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook uploaders all suck compared to the ease of Dropbox. If they added some better privacy settings, RSS feeds, and some more viewing/downloading options, they could be player in the photo sharing space.
Dropbox could definitely have my business there and be price competitive if they offered say 250 gigs for under $100 a year.
Amazon S3 (some consider it wholesale) would cost you 3 times that, and that's not even considering in/out bandwidth charges or Dropbox's nifty client and version history (which lets you, for instance, restore "deleted" files).
The question is not whether dropbox is overcharging (I am quite happy to concede they are not) compared to some other service. The point is purely made from the user end. When I can own outright a 1TB drive for $99, what is the psychological price point for which I am willing to pay not to maintain it? Twice as much, sure. Three times, okay it hurts but maybe. Eight times? Asbolutely not.
All I am saying is adoption will rise if the price point drops. Right now it is high enough to turn off price-sensitive individuals.
(caught 'assuming', trying to pull pants up quickly ;-)
No, you're right - my basic arithmetic comes out with the same number, now that I've checked it. Good catch.
I assumed (thwack) that, since 'tarsnap' is only taking a small premium over Amazon S3 charges for real use, it would always be a better price. Wrong (thwack), if you do have between 30 and 50 GB.
Possibly Dropbox can beat the price because the buyers of the 50GB plan use less than half, in average. (Leaving aside considerations of Amazon vs. dedicated infrastructure costs.)
For me a 10 gig account for less money, e.g. $39, would be perfect, I only sync documents but am reaching my limit now, and $99 is somewhat a lot especially because I don't need the offered 50 GB...
For people with the need for more storage there is a 100 GB plan I think...
As for syncing and sharing project files, that is what the git repository is for.
But quite obviously there is a market for what they sell. I'm just not in that market. Not until I can get half a TB for my $99, anyway.