"I have seen no data to backup this claim which would override my personal experience"
There have been attempts at measuring the effect of type systems, see for example this excellent presentation for some references: http://www.slideshare.net/Felienne/putting-the-science-in-co.... One of the studies mentioned here does claim that, other things being equal, static typing helps find bugs quicker.
Agreed. For an excellent description of the dedication and artistry it takes to create a good font, have a look at the film "Learning to See as an Artist", produced by Edward Tufte, describing the life and work of designer Inge Druckrey: http://vimeo.com/45232468.
Another cloud file storage service worth checking out is Jottacloud (http://www.jottacloud.com). It has similar features to Google Drive and Dropbox but being based in Norway, it complies with stricter laws on privacy and data ownership. See for example the question "What does it mean for me that my files are stored in Norway?" in their FAQ (http://www.jottacloud.com/faq/).
Compression can reduce the data size overheads, and HTTP auth can deal with security issues too.