Microsoft has been making huge improvements to its cloud storage service SkyDrive lately. Over the past year it has integrated it into Windows Phone Mango, improved its capabilities significantly with HTML5 video support and released apps for Windows Phone and iOS.
Now, a report from Brazilian site Gemind indicates that we’ll be seeing expanded storage tiers and desktop apps for Windows and Mac OS X. The site shares a screenshot from the web interface of SkyDrive that clearly advertises downloadable clients for Windows and Mac. It notes that this is not the LiveMesh product, and explicitly refers to SkyDrive.
On top of the possible clients for Mac and Windows, there are also some new pricing tiers reveled, above and beyond the standard 25GB of free storage. These offer 20, 50 or 100GB more storage for a fee, using the Brazilian Real figures given in the screenshot, this works out to, roughly:
- +20 for $11/yr
- +50 for $27/yr
- +100 for $54/yr
The additional tiers of pricing should make storage hounds happy, and those desktop apps should make accessing your SkyDrive easier and faster than the web interface. Microsoft is clearly positioning SkyDrive as a competitor for Dropbox and Apple’s iCloud, so all of the love it is getting recently isn’t much of a surprise.
If Microsoft wants the cloud to be a big part of its future, it can’t simply rely on Amazon or a third-party to bail it out, it needs to roll its own and make sure that it is as easy as possible to use on any platform. So far, it seems to be doing a good job of it.
SkyDrive users, what do you think, do these new tiers make you happy? How many of you are using the service on a Mac?
About as much use as a chocolate teapot without full Linux support, it's not truly portable. All it's comptetiors are, Dropbox, Ubuntu One and GDrive. Yet more Microsoft attempted proprietary lock in, no thanks.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeThats kinda crazy when you think about it.
Privacy-Toolz.com
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
Likeyes, i do appreciate it, in fact i use skydrive more than google docs nowadays mostly because skydrive is basically an online storage folder, and for me google docs is just and online alternative to office, it is great but it does not work as a storage service, at least not for me. Besides real time sync with office is just priceless.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeGabriel Pudiza With services like insynchq.com, docs is actually a very capable DropBox alternative. Insync and other such services are still young and have bugs to work out and features to add, and it will all be interesting if Google finally jumps in. But the point is, I have recently added Insync along side my Dropbox (I LOVE my Dropbox), and given the high cost of Dropbox, I could see myself moving to insync (or similar) totally in the near future.
All that to say, while google docs is certainly an online office option, the storage space behind it is what makes it a possible storage contender. And at the prices google charges for GBs, (.25us per GB) it is hard to ignore.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeIt's fairly well known that Microsoft is “all-in” when it comes to The Cloud, and has been for some time.
This is just a logical progression of that stance. I'm looking forward to testing out this new desktop tool.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeMick Creates Yeah, it's just a shame it's taking them such a long time to get their stuff in order. Once Skydrive has a desktop app, I will instantly switch from dropbox
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeLiam DalyMick Creates Skydrive does sort of have a desktop app in Live Mesh. You get 4gb of sync'd folders/files for free. If you go to Skydrive on the web, you can also view your sync'd files by going to "View synced folders". I've used both skydrive/mesh and dropbox for over a year, and see no difference in them. I also use skydrive to sync my OneNote. You can of course also sync onenote via dropbox but I think there is more flexibility to the skydrive option. You can access your onenote files from any windows PC via the web.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeAbout time
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
Like