Microsoft SkyDrive Cloud Storage Gunning For Dropbox

Microsoft released an update to their SkyDrive product, and they did its in a big way. This is a serious challenge to Dropbox, with the addition of Mac and Windows native app, and mobile apps for iOS and Windows Phone. But not Android mobile, which is a shame, because it would have been just as easy to write an Android client at the same time.

This is a big win for those who already have a SkyDrive account, you can be grandfathered into a 25GB plan, everyone else will be offered a 7GB plan. I've had my SkyDrive account for years but there hasn't been any integration with the desktop (not Mac anyway), and no mobile use until just recently.

SkyDrive is available everywhere I travel; laptop and mobile.

There are a few quirky things about the interface. The layout isn't like Windows Explorer, or Mac Finder. Files and folders are represented by big blocky icons, no detail list. And even weirder was they stuck the mechanism to change from large icons to small icons in the Pull Down process to refresh the screen.

Why do I think this is a serious player? Because aside from Android, which I'm sure is on the way, SkyDrive now integrates with all your systems, and you get more space. Microsoft says a study they did indicates most user have less than 7GB of data stored in the cloud, and that may be true, but the the big reason I don't have as much as I want in the cloud, is the file size limitation. I would push video files to the the cloud drives if most didn't limit to 100MB or less. That's a service imposed limit, not a user issue.

Limitations aside, 25GB is a lot of space, and I intend on using it, all of it. Get a SkyDrive and software here.