Thanks for all the feedback.  For those who desiring
personal access to tools like dropbox, or windoze apps,
or ... I suggest running a virtual containing whatever
proprietary apps you want, and share a partition for
exchanging data with it. 

I stopped using proprietary apps years ago, because
of version compatabilities; tool providers make a
change, I lose access to archival data.  However,
my wife's business accountant insists on Quickbooks,
so we run that in an isolated Windoze 7 Virtualbox
using a shared partition (which gets nightly
backups), sharing USB drives with the accountant.  
  
That means trusting Larry Ellison's gang, sigh ...

Still, open source supports most of our essential tasks,
including legacy devices abandoned by the fashionable.
As Garrison Keillor said of the grocery store in his
fictional town of Lake Wobegon, "If you can't find it
at Ralph's, you can get along pretty good without it."

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          [log in to unmask]