by Ian Uymatiao

            Most of us use and love Dropbox for a very good reason. It’s a cloud-storage solution that goes the extra mile by syncing all files across multiple devices for offline access. After living with a service that is able to do plenty of file heavy-lifting automatically, it’s safe to say that most of us cannot imagine a life without Dropbox. Many cloud services have tried over the past few years to break Dropbox’s hold of the market, and it looks like the newcomer Insync, a file-syncing service similar to Dropbox, could do just that with the help of a wildcard feature: Google Docs.

Insync, created by a team of Filipino and Singaporean software engineers, is a front-end cloud service that syncs selected files across devices via the cloud, just like Dropbox, only it uses Google Docs as the cloud-storage solution instead. You might be asking: how does Insync using Google Docs make it a potentially better service than Dropbox? There are two reasons:

1. Google Docs is more convenient when using guest computers. As great as Dropbox is at handling files through the cloud, it becomes considerably less convenient when using, say, a lab computer with Dropbox not installed. You would have to download the file, edit it, then re-upload it through the browser, an inconvenience that Dropbox was supposed to liberate us from in the first place. With Google Docs, however, you can edit most files, such as documents, within the browser itself, potentially saving a lot of productivity time. Those edited files will, of course, sync back to your personal computers as well.

2. Google Docs Storage is MUCH cheaper than Dropbox. If you are a premium Dropbox user that stores tons of files in the cloud, it may be worth moving over to Google Docs instead. While the free storage package favors Dropbox, the pricing differences grow exponentially in Google’s favor as more gigabytes are added. For example: Google charges $25 per year for 100 GB of storage. For the same capacity, Dropbox charges $20 per month, so it’s pretty obvious that Google Docs storage, when coupled with Insync, is an absolute steal in comparison.

On the other hand, Dropbox supports a multitude of platforms, while Insync only supports Windows and Mac at the moment. In addition, many applications and services today utilize Dropbox as a means of syncing miscellaneous data such as contacts, calendars, and app settings. If you only use Dropbox for syncing basic files, however, you might find Insync to be a great replacement. Odds are you already own a Google account that can edit files via Google Docs, and it also means one less account to handle. Insync is currently in beta, but you are most welcome to try it out for yourself.

(via Lifehacker)