Dropbox comes to Windows Store, but don't get your hopes up

Little more than two months after Windows 8's release, popular cloud storage service Dropbox finally offers an app through the Windows Store. However, unlike Box and SkyDrive, which both deliver a fairly competent feature set, the Dropbox app for Windows 8/RT is a half-baked affair, leaving much to be desired.

Even at first glance, the Dropbox app touts a modest feature set with no advanced functionality to speak of. It allows users to browse and preview uploaded files, edit, open and save items from "other Windows 8 apps", and share and find files using the Search Charm. Users cannot edit uploaded Dropbox files using the app, only open items, making it a glorified file browser with a few extra features. Furthermore Dropbox for Windows 8 appears to be rather unstable.

When accessing a folder with a significant number of pictures, Dropbox disappears in the background right before the app finishes rendering all the previews. It's apparently still running as it remains listed in the opened apps, but when switching back a cold start is triggered.

Furthermore, when sharing Facebook photos using the Charms bar from within the Photos app, Dropbox is not listed among the available apps that can handle the process. Box, SkyDrive and even Evernote can be used to share items, but weirdly enough Dropbox cannot. No such option exists in the People app either.

Normally, when a user selects a file, a contextual menu is provided at the bottom of the screen, providing options to open, edit or perform other operations from within the app. Box has it and so does SkyDrive, but the same cannot be said about Dropbox. Right-clicking on a file simply displays a check mark, which is useless when nothing can be done with the selected files.

When sorting reviews for Dropbox in the Windows Store by using "Most helpful" as a criteria, the first results are one and two star ratings with users complaining about the lack of functionality. Dropbox should also advertise what actually works in the posted screenshots as at the moment both the description and provided photos are misleading.