Windows Live Skydrive 2010 & Why a PC user should have one

After facing fierce competitions from especially Apple's Mac OS X, Microsoft launched several features a few years ago to make up for Windows' weaknesses. Windows Live Essentials was born then. Most of these apps were launched as counterparts to Apple's iLife suite, which comes with any Mac purchased. Some of the apps include Windows Live Messenger (iChat), Windows Live Photo Gallery (iPhoto), Windows Live Mail (Apple Mail), and Windows Live Movie Maker (iMovie). However, there is one thing in the package which has no free counterpart in Mac, and it is the Skydrive.



Skydrive is a free storage provided by Microsoft, giving a user up to 25GB of cloud storage. Each file upload, however, is limited to 50mb, meaning each individual file you upload should not exceed 50mb at the moment. 50mb is actually a comfortable size for backups of documents, musics, and pictures, because these files rarely even reach 50mb in size. Therefore, it is a great choice of online backup.

You can also use skydrive to store important documents that you want to access anywhere. For example, an important presentation, an important document which you wish to look and edit when you're not in front of your PC. From my experience Skydrive has little downtime, meaning it should be there most of the time when you need it. You can also make files private, away from those prying eyes, make files available to friends only, or simply public for everyone.



Picture sharing is also available on Skydrive. Most Malaysians use Facebook instead of Microsoft's MySpace for social networking, but the quality of pictures in Facebook is plain horrible. To say it really, it is meant for just browsing, more like a preview. And the most important thing is that most pictures without people usually don't get uploaded to Facebook, simply because there're no people in it (note: Social Networking). With the massive amount of storage in Skydrive, you can easily upload original sized pictures to Skydrive, and later share it with friends of your choice or just make it public. Viewers can even download files as .zip archive.

Massive uploading is also very easy now, thanks to Siverlight. Just use any browser to go to skydrive and upload files, you will be able to drag and drop files into the box provided in the page, with Silverlight installed in your PC or Mac.


That said, there are also quite a few weaknesses in it too. For instance, user cannot upload folder to Skydrive; they must select files. Folder management in Skydrive is also highly uncomfortable, and it hasn't been changed since its inception. Viewing Skydrive on mobile is also a PITA, as it gets unresponsive sometimes (Tried on a Nokia Symbian and iPhone before). However, it is a very useful place for online backups of your documents and files which you wish to access anywhere with Internet.