News - Kickstarter 'Plug' transforms USB drives into personal Dropbox

[wasabi]

Ugh! I got irritated as soon as they started playing the annoying hipster plinky-plonky music.

[Erlenmeyer]

It dosent fell like it lives up to its name since the plug isent actually built in.

[J3FFW1SH]

This seems really silly to me, isn't the whole idea of having a cloud storage is that it is safe from hardware malfunction? So if i store all of my files on a HDD at home not only is it at risk if i want to transfer something to my work PC i'm relying on my upload speed? lame...

[bytejunkie]

Your house gets burgled? Your data is still safe.

i dont want to be a pedant, but if they've walked off with a copy of your data on a usb drive, then your data isn't safe. you might still have a copy of it, but that doesn't make it safe.

[tomazk]

I dont understand the concept. Haw much memory this gadget has ? And in video he said you can add memory; are this ram or SD cards or what ?

[Splash]

i dont want to be a pedant, but if they've walked off with a copy of your data on a usb drive, then your data isn't safe. you might still have a copy of it, but that doesn't make it safe.

You are encrypting your backups, right?

[bytejunkie]

You are encrypting your backups, right?

I wouldnt use a device like this one, but the kind of person who would, the general user of home IT who this is aimed at, you know the sort, extended family members who we've only just got to using backups after 20 years of computers in the home and numerous lost jpgs/scratched cds, do they understand encryption? do they run bitlocker to go?

i doubt it.

[Nikumba]

Seems interesting, but how is this any different from Dropbox, Skydrive? Even more so with Skydrive intergration in 8.1 around the corner.

I think the big feature would be how your files appear on each device you install the Plug software on which would be good for non-techie people.

Kimbie

[Splash]

I wouldnt use a device like this one, but the kind of person who would, the general user of home IT who this is aimed at, you know the sort, extended family members who we've only just got to using backups after 20 years of computers in the home and numerous lost jpgs/scratched cds, do they understand encryption? do they run bitlocker to go?

i doubt it.

Not sure the general user you describe would: they're likely dumping stuff on Dropbox because they don't know about how often they have security issues. If you're dumping unencrypted stuff to the cloud then you're *still* better off using a device like this to replicate your data to a family member's house whether it's encrypted or not as it's only sitting on kit that you control. Once your data is uploaded to pretty much any cloud backup solution all bets are off from a security perspective: they could be doing anything with it.

As I said, RasPi and Owncloud for me, but I still think that this is a neat package. Certainly not unique, but a neat package and sold properly it has potential. I've Kickstarted in for a couple of units, and as things stand there are currently over 4000 other people who seem to think the same.

[Percy1983]

Just watch the video, I am sure that was a apple video with steve jobs junior!

As other have said it does nothing I can't already do, but apple fans should love it.