Windows SkyDrive is Worth Checking Out

With cloud computing currently the buzz-word online and all the large players from Apple to Amazon competing to store your stuff, there is one company that has been offering a surprisingly accomplished service since 2007 – Microsoft.

Their Windows SkyDrive was originally launched as Windows Live Folders, but since then, a number of tweaks and changes to the service have let it become arguably the best featured free storage service available. With so many companies charging you for storage in the cloud, SkyDrive offers  25Gb of free storage and syncing and office services that are unrivalled anywhere else.

Overview

Sky Drive used to be a simple 25Gb storage service, but the addition of Office Web Apps changed that instantly. It is now possible to open SkyDrive anywhere in the world and compose or edit Office documents such as Word or Excel and then save them into your Sky Drive, regardless of whether the computer you are using has Office installed or not.

By now, you might be thinking that all this sounds remarkably like the popular Google Docs service, and in truth, there are a number of similarities between the two.

Both link in well with their web based mail services, Hotmail and Gmail, and both offer online documents and photo storage. However, Google Docs will charge you for any storage over 1GB whereas SkyDrive is completely free. In addition, the integration between Sky Drive and Office is excellent, and you do not need to jump through ‘document conversion’ hoops as you sometimes need to with Google Docs.

Office Integration

Even if you forget the fact that SkyDrive offers free storage, the recent addition of integration between your desktop files and SkyDrive in the cloud has proven to be the best feature of the service.  It is now possible to save files directly from your desktop to your SkyDrive.

Say for example, you have written a report for work, and you won’t be taking your laptop in with you in the morning. All you need to do once the report is complete is open the document and choose the file menu > Share> Save to SkyDrive. You’ll then see a pop up window that will ask you to log into your SkyDrive account. Simply enter your Windows Live ID and password and then sign in. You can then choose a folder in the SkyDrive to store the document, and that’s it.

The two documents sync instantaneously (unlike the temperamental and frustrating Mobile Me service for Mac for example).

Document Sharing

If the report is for people at work to look at, you can choose from a number of file sharing options by simply editing the file permissions from just yourself to ‘some friends’, ‘friends’, ‘my friends and their friends’ to ‘everyone.’

If you’ve used the Google Picasa service, you’ve probably found the 1GB limit a bit restrictive. Whilst you’re unlikely to fill SkyDrive’s 25 Gb limit with documents, all those Gb’s do come in very useful when used on your free online photo storage and album area. Again, this album area can be opened to as many or as few people as you choose, and as with documents, uploading is simple and instantaneous.

Lastly, there is room on the Sky Drive for all kinds of other files, and these too can be shared with friends  There is even a section for storing and linking all of your favorite sites for people to see.

Movies Not Included

If there is one area where SkyDrive does fall down, it is in the size of files you are allowed to upload. Currently, you can’t upload any file greater then 50MB, which means, documents, photos and most individual music tracks will be ok, but an album, a TV episode or a movie won’t work.

In comparison, Google Docs will let you upload as much as 1GB per file in one go. But, the way I get around this is to sign up for the free 2GB Dropbox account for those rare times when I have any larger files to share with friends.

Conclusion

Windows services are invariably clunky, over engineered and don’t function quite as seamlessly as their competitors. Windows Sky Drive is the exception, and if you already have Hotmail and are thinking about moving to the cloud, Sky Drive is a no brainer.

(By) Alex Simmonds is a freelance journalist from the UK. He likes to write about technology, cricket and jazz but these days seems to be mostly writing about search engine optimisation