Can we have an option to lock files we're working on to avoid conflicted copies?

This would be a nice feature indeed

Badge doesn't work for us. Apart from not being consistent and reliable, I mean. 

We have some computers outside the office and many in the office. To avoid having multiple copies of everything downloaded on the same internet connection, dropbox is installed on just one computer in the office, and the whole folder is shared to the other computers over the network.

The badge will never help in this case.

Dropbox should lock out the other files as read only, in the same way that Windows does, so that you can't open a file if another user has it open on another computer. Simple.

That would be cool!

Or at least - I would appreciate the possibility to see, that someone else is working with the file.

Badge often fails to load in Dropbox Business and users can turn off badge (can't be controlled at admin level). An admin option to lock files when editing for Business clients should be available.

When will a generic windows type file locking be available to all types of files? 
If not a lock a simple warning would help.

It already exists in the 'Dropbox badge' feature. It is being rolled out at present with priority I believe to Pro users. 

Dropbox dont release roadmaps I'm afraid Simon - although they do give some big announcements out at their Open events. However, as they've not mentioned this (and I imagine it would be quite a 'big' announcement) I cant see it happening anytime soon (if at all) to be honest. 

Sorry. 

This feature is needed for more than office files. Other shared files such as custom databases need to be locked to one user from time-to-time. Might even be nice to have this as a feature of the API so developed applications can set this for its own files.