Good news for those who have been waiting and anticipating the arrival of Dropbox for Windows 8, it is now available. The popular cloud storage and sharing service has built a reputation as one of the more ubiquitous ways that folks like to share files and so its arrival on Windows 8 as a metro app is significant for the new platform.
The app is available to download for free and will work on both Windows 8 and Windows RT machines allowing you to download and share files at will.
Apps designed for Windows 8’s new touch friendly interface have been populating the Windows Store at a far higher rate than with Windows Phone. Presently there are still some gaps for well-known offerings and services for Microsoft's latest app store and its apps like Dropbox that will do much to show the platform is getting attention from important developers.
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It’s unclear why anyone using Windows 8 or Windows Phone would want to use Dropbox as Microsoft’s own SkyDrive service superior in almost every way. Still when it comes to sharing it seems more folks are fundamentally more aware of Dropbox as a way to share things with others.
- The will work on Intel/AMD based machines as well as machines based on ARM like the Surface tablet. The features are as follows:
- Browse and preview all of your files and photos on Dropbox
- Open, edit and save files from other Windows 8 apps
- Share any photo, file or folder with the Share Charm
- Find your files with the Search Charm
The app is rather bare bones at the moment, you can browse your files using the app and you can save to Dropbox from an app but they have not implemented use of the Share Charms to upload to Dropbox. This is just the first version so we’re sure to see the app grab a few more features over time. As there really isn’t much to the app it performs very well on the Surface and if you do happen to rely on Dropbox then this will certainly get you by.
Windows Phone has SkyDrive already built into the very core of the operating system. The Skydrive service gives you more storage to begin with, is arguably more secure and provides a richer experience when using Microsoft’s eco system with apps available for the Xbox 360 and Windows. It is hard to see how the Dropbox service by should be taken seriously by Windows Phone users when it lacks an actual Windows Phone app.
We wonder if this means we could be about to get an official client for Windows Phone too, let’s hope so eh Dropbox?
You can download the app from the Windows Store here. Be sure to let us know what you think of the app and why you’d use this over SkyDrive. Comments are open below.
