SkyDrive – 25 Gigs of FREE online storage!

If you haven’t heard about Microsoft’s latest hot FREE feature, SkyDrive, then it’s lucky you are reading this. While Microsoft will try to sell you the Windows Live service, the cost of which really isn’t that bad, you can ignore that part of it and get what amounts to an absolutely free place to store up to 25 gigabytes of files. What makes it even better is you have 3 basic folder types you can create on your SkyDrive.

1) Public folders which you can share files with everyone.
2) Shared folders which you can share files with select people.
3) Private, secure, encrypted folders that only you can see.

Password protection:  You set the passwords and you decide who sees your files.
Drag and drop:  Uploading your files is as easy as dragging and dropping the files from your computer onto your web browser. I’m not sure this works with anything other than IE7. The site will install an ActiveX control so your mileage may vary if you aren’t using IE7. 
Shared folders:  If you are working on a project with friends or family, co-workers, or a partner, using the shared folders the whole group can upload, download, and collaborate with you on documents and any other files or programs you may be working on.
Direct links:  This is the fun part. Each folder on SkyDrive has a unique Web address, so you can save the link as a favorite or copy-and-paste it into e-mail, or post the link on your web site, which will give people direct access to the data.

Sounds good right? I’ve been using it for a short while and I like it so far. Besides, it’s completely free and that part is really hard to beat! We all like free. So, what’s the catch, or the downside to this you might be asking yourself? There are only 3 that I have discovered so far.

1) You will have to put up with some ads that are on the web page… which is tolerable. Mostly junk like weight loss, and other drivel. But, you never know, something that interests you might show up… but I pretty much ignore it all.

2) The real catch to this free service that I see as a negative is you can’t create sub-folders. This means that you can’t simply copy your hard drive folders directly over to the SkyDrive. Wow, that’s a real bummer you might be saying… but, there is a simple solution to that issue. Zip archives. On your hard drive, you can right-click the folder, zip all sub folders and files into a single file, then upload that file. A small hassle, but using something that is free sometimes involves a little extra work to get around a limitation. But, even with this solution, there is a small catch (see #3).

3) You can’t upload files larger than 50 megabytes. That’s a pretty large file so that shouldn’t bother most people. If needed, just re-organize your files so they don’t take up more than the allowed file size. To see how large a folder is on your hard drive, just right click the folder, then choose Properties. Now you can see not only how much space the folder is using (size), but also how many files there are.

If you are interested, go here to sign up for this service, and remember, this part of the service is free. http://home.live.com/  Once there look for the SkyDrive link… click that and just follow the directions on the page.

Enjoy!

 Larry Perry
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