Welcome to a new feature for Used Mac for the winter. As the nights draw ever darker, we all need something to look forward to in the evening. And here at UsedMac there is nothing we love more than coming home to a warm flat, putting the Kettle on and checking out some fresh App meat.

The inaugural outing of fresh meat today is a biggie too: Dropbox

This is absolutely the most important cloud based app to hit the scene in the last year. Now instantly I can hear you dozing off and reaching for your iPhone to play Angry Birds. But stop and consider this:

Imagine a USB key you never need to carry. One that is always on all your devices: Vista PC at work, MacBook Air at home and iPad on the train.

Then imagine being able to upload a Powerpoint through a website at a Conference and it appearing effortlessly on all your other machines.

Then imagine sharing folders with other friends effortlessly.

Ok so you get the point. We LOVE this App. It's beyond brilliant and like all beyond brilliant apps (ahem), simple to use.

You simply register at the Dropbox website and install the Sync app. This will create a 'Dropbox' folder amongst your Documents and Download folders on your Mac, or if on Windows under your My Documents (Linux users aren't left out either).

So you can use Dropbox via either Finder on your Mac, with the unobtrusive Sync app keeping across your file moves. Or if your on a Corporate or Public computer where you cannot install the app, there is also its intuitive web interface:

You'll get 2GB of storage for free when you sign up and they're are also paid options for getting more storage: $9.99 a month for 50GB of storage or $19.99 a month for 100GB. You could easily keep your iTunes library in your Dropbox folder for access to your music anywhere if you are prepared to pay for it.

2GB is pretty ample anyway for free. And as one of the benefits of Dropbox is easy file sharing with others, every time you sign up a mate to use Dropbox, you'll get an extra 250MB of space to play with when they install the syncing app. You can do this up to a maximum of a rather useful 8GB.

So why use this over the alternatives such as YouSendIt, Rapidshare or Windows Live Mesh? Well these apps are simple upload and share websites. They are great for one off file sends that are too large for email, but for sharing multiple files, it can get a bit clunky and repetitive. With Dropbox though, you can simply share a Folder within your Dropbox on your Mac with a friend, copy the files into it and that's it. Once they are uploaded they will appear in your friends Dropbox.

You can also easily share files publicly, as you would with the alternatives. Within Dropbox there is a Public folder, any item you put in here will be given a public URL. You can easily copy it to the clipboard by right clicking on a file and being given a public URL, just as below:

You can sign up to Dropbox here

Its our favourite App in the world RIGHT NOW!