Online group collaboration tools?

Resilient

I am working with a research group on a fairly media heavy project. We are looking for a good system to share files (images, word, excel etc.), have conversations (threaded, comment style conversations would be fine) and share links.

Options I have considered:
Google Docs - no good conversation management, and no good way to share links
Google Wave - who knows how long it will exist, seems difficult to manage and organize files
Teambox - Good file and conversation management, link sharing is alright if we set up a page but it is expensive
Dropbox - Great file sharing, no conversation or link sharing.

I am hoping someone out there has experience with some other file sharing, group organization type system that is awesome and I just haven't come across.

Currently I am leaning towards Teambox, but figured I would stop by and ask here first.

admanb

I haven't used it in a few years, but Basecamp was very useful and 37signals does good work. Depending on what Teambox plan you were looking at it may be more expensive, but I figured I'd throw it out there.

Edilith

While I haven't used it myself, Collabtive might be worth a try. I'm not sure how it handles/tracks conversation threads, but my friends have used it effectively in university group projects by managing deadlines, milestones, timesheets and so on. Open source, too!

DietCokeTin

I was going to reply that Google Apps can do all of that, but Google recently decided to separate Google Wave from Google Apps, so it's not a complete package. Google Docs (images, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.) with just about anyone. You can still access Google Wave, just not from a Google Apps account.

For dynamic online collaboration, you can use an EtherPad variant. I personally use TypeWithMe; I find it's the most reliable, but there are others out there. Similarly, you could always host your own EtherPad server, as Google makes the code open source. The online clients are easy to use; just browse to the page, create a new document, and share that link to whomever. Every user can then modify a document, and their edits are color coded, so you know who did what. You can save the resulting document.

For any type of drawing, I use Twidla. Simple stuff; just like EtherPad clients, start a new presentation and then hand out the link to whomever you'd like to join. You can save the resulting image.

Using a wiki is also another way to go if you'd like to that option. There are a half-dozen or so extremely reliable wiki-hosting sites; simple google-fu can probably point you to them.