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Comment by _suoiruc | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps you could expand on that?

If you pay for Dropbox what exactly are you paying for? Software to communicate with S3?

I'll accept that the software (python+rsync+an icon) is arguably "value added", but for the paying Dropbox user, what they are getting is still S3 storage.

Am I missing something?

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You're paying for a service that auto syncs your data across multiple devices efficiently and keeps versioned backups of everything. The fact that they currently use s3 for storage is an implementation detail.

So basically it's the same as rsync and a little scripting, but without commands and scriptability? I don't use Dropbox so I'm curious. I'd like to know if they're offering something to paying customers that S3 does not, apart from their particular combination of python and rsync. If we just focus on storage is Dropbox more expensive? If yes, by how much? I think this is a valid question.

If you just focus on storage, yes, Dropbox is more expensive.

But this is kind of like saying iOS is just an expensive closed variant of FreeBSD.

Since I'm not drawing a salary from Dropbox's marketing division, I'm not going to go in depth here but I'll just say that Dropbox can be used easily and efficiently by normal people who have never seen a command line. Whereas your home brew python+rsync scripts can only be used by nerds like us.

It would be interesting to see how your homegrown sync solution works on various operating systems (desktop + mobile) and offers a web-based UI to do the same on the go.

Maybe you discover the sarcasm in my comment. ;)

my dad loves dropbox. he would be lost with s3. for most people it's not "arguably value added"; it's the difference between possible and not.

(another vote for a log scale (or something equivalent, like a separate "units" that sets the scale to 1s, 10s, 100s...). also, the tick marks should be on reasonable, round values)

Right. And the topic of this thread is a price matrix for S3. Presumably your Dad is not going to be looking at it.

then maybe you should have said something along those lines earlier, instead of repeatedly asserting that s3 and dropbox are equivalent (and then asking if you'd missed anything).

Do you read carefully? When I asked if I missed anything I was referring to anything besides the arguable "value add". My apologies if that was not clear. But the value add is precisely what you focused on, and argued (predictably): the python, rsync and the icon. I'm asking about the S3 component.

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