DropBox really shines when it comes to the capabilities of their client.
I installed Box from few months ago at work, and used it to share a few screencasts that I was working on > 200MBs per file about 10 files.
I got home and fired up the home machine...For the next five minutes the internet connection was jammed.
Turns out you cannot do a selective sync of only certain folders. This would be a very basic use case in my opinion but is not supported by Box.
So, for all those whinging about the price...it is not really that bad.
I agree that the killer feature with Dropbox is that it "just works". I jumped on the 50GB Mac mobile app special from Box.net a few months ago and upon trying to use their Box Sync desktop client I found that it just doesn't work. Bogged the machine down, was never able to properly sync files. I've got 50GB at Box.net that I don't know what to do with and I definitely wasn't moved to the category of a prospective consumer client.
It really frustrates me that there are separate clients that do the same thing, but talk to a different domain. If these companies cared about their customers they would be putting together an open source spec for cloud syncing so that we could just pick our favorite clients and tie them to the individual accounts.
Not going to happen. Part of the reason is just what you mentioned: they care about their customers. With various clients they would have to support the problems coming from all of the clients and that would cause their service to look bad even though the problem lies within client app.
That's a crazy weak argument. I'm sure glad JPEG's aren't limited to only work with apps created by JPEG Inc. Dropbox's new image app would be pretty worthless if every company was as insistent about keeping things proprietary.
I might be alone here, but I actually really prefer Box to Dropbox even though I do not use the desktop sync tool very often (though I've tried it). I'm sure the free 50GB I've gotten skews my opinion. For a college student like me on the kind of budget I have, knowing 50GB from Box will never go away versus getting maybe 10GB for free only temporarily at Dropbox makes a big difference. It's useful to have that kind of space for school, work, or just family sharing.
FWIW, I've never really had any issues with it being bogged down even when using the desktop sync tool. So your mileage probably will vary.
I'm upto 18.9gb permanently free on my Dropbox account. They periodically do promotions that give you permanent space. After using Dropbox for 5-6 years I'm still only using 62% of that space. For just storing documents, code and the odd file I'm sharing with people I've had no issue with the space available.
Last year there was the 'great space race' where they were promoting to students, I think I got 8gb for that. (https://www.dropbox.com/help/390/en)
Before that there was a beta for testing out their new photo system. Which gave a max of 5gb free. (It appears this is still available to give you upto 3gb https://www.dropbox.com/help/287/en)
So, for all those whinging about the price...it is not really that bad.