milkboy
i have used quite a number of cloud storage provider over the years and aside from the mentioned list, theres also others which i think is good, but i'll just list my fav.
BOX, which is my current favourite for personal storage and sharing. they give free 50GB free account from time to time (i'm on the free 50GB).
OWNCLOUD, self-deployable, scalable and customizable solutions and my favourite for business purposes.
Dave Shevett
The number of flaws in this article are legion. Lets just point out a couple of the basics.
1) I searched. No where in this article is the word 'security' used. If I'm using a cloud service, I want some basic assumption that what I put there is private. Microsoft has a documented history of looking into files stored on SkyDrive, and banning users if they find the files offensive. I will have nothing to do with them for this reason only.
Directly from the TOS for a Microsoft account: "3.3. What does Microsoft do with my content? When you upload your content to the services, you agree that it may be used, modified, adapted, saved, reproduced, distributed, and displayed to the extent necessary to protect you and to provide, protect and improve Microsoft products and services. For example, we may occasionally use automated means to isolate information from email, chats, or photos in order to help detect and protect against spam and malware, or to improve the services with new features that makes them easier to use."
2) Apple's iDrive is an integrated API for use with Apple products. I would hardly lump it in with Dropbox as a cloud storage system. It's prone to failure and inconsistent behaviour, difficult to manage, and has virtually no team / group services (how do you share a single document privately with a group you're working with?)
3) The 'interface' win for Skydrive is laughable. "It wins because everyone knows microsoft stuff, right?" - what an absurd statement. Microsoft's interface designs change daily, with no consistency, very little UX application, and just plain bad choices. Dropbox probably has the cleanest interface of all the services. SkyDrive is NOT a microsoft desktop application, it's a webservice, with a web interface. Everyone knows how to use web browsers, so why isn't that applied?
4) Last but not least, you give Microsoft the win for this inane statement "Although iOS and Android dominate the mobile landscape, Windows Phone has recently been confirmed as the fastest growing mobile OS and so, all things considered, that's enough to give OneDrive the edge." - the 'fastest growing mobile OS' is an absurd statement. If there are 5 windows mobile phones out there, and another 5 are launched, that's a 100% increase! The fastest growing platform! According to Gartner Research, Windows Mobile has 3% of the marketplace. Blackberry has 2.7%. Dropbox is available on Blackberry, IOS, Android, Windows Phone, Symbian, MeeGo, Mac Desktop, Linux, and of course, desktop Windows. Other than Microsoft platforms, Onedrive supports only OSX, iOS, and Android. How can you possibly support OneDrive having better platform support?
Ron_S
Everything here is true, and I use a few of these services myself for casual file transfers that are too large for email attachments, etc. The one dealbreaker for me, however, and the reason I will not use any of these to store personal information, photos, or anything else that matters to me, is that none of them have client side encryption. Every day, another article appears detailing how easy it is for private documents, photos, or videos to wind up in the hands of people or organizations for whom they were never intended. So the last thing I would ever do is entrust my documents or photos to a service that is wide-open to theft. Yes, I could encrypt everything before I send it up, but why should I have to go through that trouble when perfectly adequate services are available that do this for me, and also operate on all of the systems that I use, including Linux , Windows, and Android? SpiderOak is one that meets all of these requirements , and I'm sure there are others. So I would strongly advise that users think long and hard before placing photos of their children, or their tax documents, strategic business documents, or anything else into cloud storage without considering the risks.
Rann Xeroxx
Not really seeing the added features of iCloud mentioned in this story that are somehow better than either Google Drive or OneDrive. I have a Mac and an iPad, I have logged into iCloud both from the web page and the settings and not seeing anything other than they do have a "find your device" settings.
I also run a Surface RT and am in the OneDrive (SkyDrive) a lot. It seems to be on par with iCloud.
Gaƫtan Mahon
Before I did the change from Windows 7 to Windows 8 I was able to access ALL the files from my main PC using a remote desktop like feature built into the SkyDrive Web Application as long as your hardware was actually online.
No messing around with putting needed files into specific folders in order to access them while on the go or stuff like that... Kinda miss that feature wherever it went since Windows 8 and it's native integration of SkyDrive - Used to have a Desktop Client which made the remote desktop feature possible.
Ah well... For now I changed to Bittorrent Sync to keep automatic Backups across all my hardware without the need to think twice.
Has neither a cost attached to it nor does it come with any restrictions and it's storage space is only limited by your own hardware, what's more to ask for?
Makda
I run Linux, Android and Windows 8 at home and interact with apple and windows xp users - dropbox has been the easiest service for me to use.
I find the tablet version of google drive a little more useful than the dropbox version but both fail in tablet/phone versions since they seem to be designed to not sync files locally (unless specific files are selected for local sync). both these services need to allow a configuration option to allow all files to be available offline when device is not online ( and also to save on bandwidth costs)
GvillaThrilla
The only one that I would consider paying for is Amazon Cloud. A while back they offered 20 Gb with unlimited MP3 storage for $20 a year. With the unlimited MP3 storage I have not come close to filling the 20 gigabytes up...
BZD
Good comparison.
I wonder how long it will be before Microsoft needs to change the name of their Cloud again. There is a internet hosting company by the name of One and they even offer a Cloud solution among their services, so I can't imagine them being happy and for sure Microsoft is more in conflict with them than with Sky media.
Daniel Bennett
So I am pretty happy with dropbox and one drive now because I was able to get over 100gb of space for "nothing" and what I mean by that is with dropbox I searched how to get free space and ended up getting 50gb for no cost. I also got the s4 and when you setup the phone it gives you 50gb for free (1yr only) and then with one drive I was able to get 100gb by using bing search on my browser and use there reward system to get 100gb for nothing other then sometimes not getting as good of search results as Google but hey it got me 100gb cloud space for a 1yr now.
yrag
"Although iOS and Android dominate the mobile landscape, Windows Phone has recently been confirmed as the fastest growing mobile OS and so, all things considered, that's enough to give OneDrive the edge."
LOL—WOW Stu! Last time I checked, Windows OS comes in at a VERY distant third of mobile OSs after Android and iOS and through some kind of pretzel logic known only to you, you convince yourself that gives Microsoft some kind of advantage.
I won't be using you to place my bets on the ponies—that's for sure!