I found a bunch of links indicating that Dropbox or Google Drive can be rejiggered as a service instead of a startup item, meaning the tools do their sync-thing even
when the associated Dropbox or Drive account is not logged in. (Here's a sample:
http://www.dropboxwiki.com/tips-and-tricks/start-dropbox-as-a-windows-service.) This, combined with one (and only one) Dropbox Pro or Google Drive Unlimited account got my head spinning with possibilities:
Office users with laptops have a local copy of their files on the office file server.
Dropbox for business isn't necessary because all users have access to file server.
This even provides a degree of offsite backup for the file server.
Of course, Dropbox doesn't support the startup item-to-service rejigger. (Google might support a rejigger of Drive. I haven't looked into it.) And all my crazy ideas are predicated on the idea that Dropbox or Drive rejiggered as a service works
and works reliably.
Do any of you smart folks with Experts Exchange see downsides to this configuration? Ideally, one or two of you have gone down this road or a road similar to this. If so, what problems have you encountered?