Review of Box.net- Online file storage and sharing

Box.net was one of the first web 2.0 online sharing services, I mean they were the amongst the first ones who had integrated the power of Ajax in the online sharing and made it a much usable application. Box.net seems good but we’ll come to know more about it when we actually look at the PROS and CONS of the service. Although, at this point of time, box has closed the registration but I’d registered for Box at the time of launch itself or may be quite near to it. Box.net, which started off as college business project but has grown into a commercial service and a service which looks good but how good is it, lets find out about it…

PROS of BOX.NET :

1. Free storage of 1 GB & 10 GB Bandwidth : Box.net is giving away free 1 GB space to attract users. In todays world, 1 GB is enough for important documents and thus I think that it is a decent move and decent space to offer. And 10 GB bandwidth is also good enough to lure any web user.

2. Nice Ajaxified Interface : Box.net has a nice and simple ajaxified interface and due to which the usage of this online application because quite easy and simple. Due to the simple interface, it loads fast and thus serves the purpose in a better way.

3. Widgets to share files : Box.net has widgets which can be used to showcase the public files in various places like websites, myspace, blogs, etc. This can be easily used to store the files and without worrying about updating any blog or any link on the websites because the widget will do it automatically.

4. Editing of Word Documents : With the integration of >Zoho Writer, Box.net allows users to view and edit the word documents. This can be certainly handy, when a user doesn’t have a word editing software installed on any computer and on top of it, without downloading the files and then reuploading the files, users will be able to edit them directly.

CONS of BOX.NET :

1. No integration with the desktop or Virtual Drive : It will be nice if Box.Net can come up with a tool which could create a virtual drive becuase a virtual drive will always give easy uploading or syncronizing of files.

2. No possbilities of viewing files online or listening to music : There is one thing which I loved about Omnidrive and it was that it allowed users to view the images in form of slideshow and allowed to listen to music through an online music player and all of this without downloading the files on the desktop and it is one particular feature which I find most useful.

3. Pricing & Plans: Box.Net has three plans and the biggest plan which they’ve got has the price tag of $ 99 and they are only giving 15 GB in that, however other services are giving more space for the same price.

Overall Views & Ratings :

Box.Net seems to be a good service and I can say that they started off really well, however they seem to be lost somewhere at this point of time because other competitors are giving good features and that too at lesser price. So, I think they’ll need to improve the features and they’ll need to reduce the price so as to come in the competition.

Technorati : Box.net, ReviewSaurus