Microsoft to Offer Free Online Storage 290
athloi writes "Microsoft Corp. is giving computer users up to 500 megabytes of online storage for their documents, music, photos and video. They're offering it to a select 5,000 test users for now, but will make it widely available later this summer. This move is the latest in a series by the previous large corporation we all loved to hate to compete with the newest large corporation we might hate and fear, Google."
Google already done it... indirectly (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Google already done it... indirectly (Score:4, Informative)
Re:You've Got To Be Kidding... (Score:4, Informative)
And a 20 megabyte attachment limit.
Omnidrive (Score:5, Informative)
Users get 1Gb free, and up to 50Gb is available if you want to pay.
Disclaimer: not a shill, just a happy beta tester.
Re:Too little... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Google already done it... indirectly (Score:5, Informative)
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answ
Re:"We"? Speak for yourself. (Score:5, Informative)
I tried it. It sucks.
Nothing innovative, plain old technologies. You go to a page with 5 filename inputs, you select each file, you put them in folders, you share certain folders.
Screenshots:
* http://tinyurl.com/2vaa7e [tinyurl.com] (main page)
* http://tinyurl.com/38fsb9 [tinyurl.com] (uploading screen )
* http://tinyurl.com/2j53kp [tinyurl.com] (folder with files)
It does not seem to be "mountable" either.
Re:Google already done it... indirectly (Score:5, Informative)
That aside, the mere fact that nobody can be held liable for the lost of data and that backups are likely not made, I wouldn't feel bery comfortable with the data being there as a means of recovery.
Re:Google already done it... indirectly (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Too little... (Score:2, Informative)
I'm not even someone who is a big Microsoft fan - this is posted from a Debian machine, and I personally concur with the politics of Debian.
On a side note, Bill Gates did not make money from being a "cheap penny pincher". He made money by entering a market where the only real costs of manufacture are the initial R&D. As he is able to "value price" a product at ~£200 (windows) that has a per-unit cost of only a few pence (cd, booklet, box), he is a billionaire.
I could very easily just mod you down (I have mod points) but I decided that the scale of your ignorance warranted a challenging post.
AOL's XDrive blows Microsoft's trial away (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The same as everyone else (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yes, but is it ssh(fs) accessible? (Score:3, Informative)
Anyone heard of Xdrive? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Too little... (Score:3, Informative)
Windows makes a profit margin of more than 85 percent. To put this in personal terms, for every dollar you spent licensing the OS last year, Microsoft spent less than 15 cents on all Windows packaging, marketing, support, and, oh yeah, improving the product.
Re:Too little... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I don't need storage: I NEED BANDWIDTH! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Too little... (Score:3, Informative)
It's not for Windows Mobile either.
LiveDrive is one of the Vista features that slipped from the actual release. http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Microsof t-confirms-Live-Drive-plans/0,130061733,139267189, 00.htm [zdnet.com.au]
Looks like the space they're offering has slipped a bit too. Still, size isn't important, is it guys?
Gmail offers what? (Score:2, Informative)
Um, Taking a look at my account now, it's at 2869MB of storage and growing daily. (they actually have a ticker: mail.google.com ) I think you are thinking of when they first started?
Oh, by the way, Gmail is also available to everyone now too, without an invite.
I was going to mod on this story...
Re:The same as everyone else (Score:5, Informative)
Again, I call bullshit. Yes, Dreamhost does oversell like crazy. They even admit to it! [dreamhost.com]. But they actually will let you use all the bandwidth and disk you're given. All of it.
Right now, a quick look at my panel shows that I'm using 64.1GB of space (as of last measurement). This month, I've moved over 1TB of HTTP traffic alone (I've used another 20GB or so of FTP traffic). No black mercedes. No phonecalls. Not even a damn e-mail from Dreamhost.
As Dreamhost points out, the only usage-related issue they'll cut you off for is CPU usage. For serving static content (i.e. not PHP pages), Dreamhost actually kicks ass. They really will let you hit both your quotas. Sure, you won't be able to run the next iTunes Movie Store off one of their shared hosts, but you can actually use all the space and not get so much as an e-mailed warning.