I’ve been a user of both SkyDrive and Dropbox since their early beta stages, and while the new release of SkyDrive makes it significantly easier to get files to and fro, it still doesn’t match the ease, functionality, and platform ubiquity of Dropbox.
The early days of SkyDrive were just plain embarrassing for Microsoft. I’m sorry, but the voodoo (Gladinet Cloud Bridge or FTP tricks) you had to go through in order to get files uploaded, to a then unheard of free 25gig of free cloud storage, kept it from being a player. It was also straight up online storage as there was no real sync function. Microsoft has a service called LiveMesh, still available via the Windows Live Essential 2011 download, but oddly enough it didn’t use SkyDrive space and frankly it’s still confusing how the two will fit together.
What is missing from the new offering is a way to utilize the service via my Android devices, unless I want to consider skydrive.com “a way” to utilize the service. Technically speaking, the SkyDrive site does work, but I can’t share to it without sending an email or utilizing third party apps. Apps are available for Windows Phone and iOS. That said, I went ahead and took advantage of the promotion they are running to grandfather existing users into 25gig free accounts since the new limit for free will be 7gig.
Of all the cloud storage systems though the one I continue to wait was waiting to see is Google Drive which just launched today. Given that I am on an Android phone, tablet, and heavily invested in the Google ecosystem already, it seems like a logical fit. Not to mention that I often use Picasa for light photo editing and the web gallery or Google+ for photo display. I am very curious what Google will do to try it out.
The hands down winner is Dropbox for me though. If you’re looking for one service to sync with other platforms, that has versioning and keeps your files accessable, go grab a Dropbox account. Oh, if you use this LINK to DropBox it will get both of us a bit of extra space.
Other cloud service options I’ve used include SugarSync (5gig free), Box.net, PogoPlug which uses hardware to make any hard drive accessible online, and Polkast which bypasses online storage altogether by creating a secure tunnel to computers that are constantly on and online. Oh one other that Scott Howard introduced me too, ADrive which has an mammoth 50gig free personal account limit. Actually, there are at least another 5 others I can think of off the top of my head…but I’ve listed my favorites. Let the online storage wars rage on. It’s good for users. What is your favorite solution?