Dropbox Project Infinite
April 26th 2016
Dropbox today previewed a new feature they're calling Project Infinite. Essentially it will allow users to see both sync'd and unsync'd files side by side on the desktop.
With Project Infinite, we're addressing a major issue our users have asked us to solve. The amount of information being created and shared has exploded, but most people still work on devices with limited storage capacity. While teams can store terabyte upon terabyte in the cloud, most individuals' laptops can only store a small fraction of that. Getting secure access to all the team's data usually means jumping over to a web browser, a clunky user experience at best.
That pretty much sums things up for me on laptops. With SSD storage, it's obviously impractical to sync everything in a paid account that could reach to 1TB, for example. So, I juggle stuff with selective sync and if I need something I log into the webpage.
This sounds a much better solution. It could possibly be a little confusing, but it appears Dropbox is trying to make the experience seamless. When talking smaller files on fast Internet, it should work well, but otherwise pulling down files on-demand may be a more frustrating experience to the point of essentially doing a selective sync.
Anyway, Project Infinite is currently being tested with select customers. There is no timeline given for a general release.