Or, "why I'm not giving Dropbox money, and you might not want to either".

Particularly since going paperless, I've been pondering where to store my digital files. The days of keeping everything on a PC under the desk in the corner are long over - I have multiple different devices including my smartphone, and I want at least some subset of my working files on all of them. Then there's backup, sharing selectively with others, encryption, ...

I've used Dropbox for quite a few years now - it has widespread adoption and various voluntary groups I'm part of use it as a handy way to share files. One might not be thrilled by placing data in the hands of a US mega-corporation, but at least it gives some hope of central management, rather than e-mailing stuff around which is doomed to remain on people's machines long after they have no further need for it.

However, understandably, Dropbox want people to move from their free tier to paying them money. And if you're on the free tier, every folder which other people share with you counts towards your quota - not just the quota of the person sharing it.

Before giving in and paying them their pound of flesh, though, I did some maths on the back of an envelope:

Even factoring in the cost of buying the hardware, and the electricity to run it, hosting some Network Attached Storage (NAS) at home looks like an option worth exploring - as long as the kit lasts more than five years, it should be cheaper than Dropbox. And there's something to be said for having private and personal data hosted at home on hardware under my control.

Look out for part 2 of this series, in which I'll explain why I went for the Synology and my initial findings from setting it up.