SkyDrive Feedback

Now that the new SkyDrive client has been out a week or so what do you think?

I'm really liking it so far:

• Nice integration with Explorer (this opens a ton of options). Works just like any other folder.
• Local cache is great when anonymous crashes the internet.
• Super simple

Not so nice:

• No sync'ing favorites (sure I could make my SkyDrive favorites folder IE's favorite folder but Mesh's simple point-click-and-ship option was better).
• No sync'ing of Office settings (same as previous)
• No peer sync'ing (don't store my gazillions of gigabytes of music in the cloud)
• No ability to share files from Explorer (must go to the web to do it -- which has a great interface BTW).

As others have mentioned W8 will probably have app settings, favorites (desktop IE only), and the like built-in. I really hope for the rest of us they'll include those features in the desktop client.

Currently my setup is:

• Desktops/W8 Tablet: SkyDrive client and Mesh client
• Android phone: DropBox (sync to/from desktop) and 3rd party SkyDrive client

IMO, SkyDrive vs. G Drive (Winner, Loser):

• SkyDrive: My stuff is my stuff, GDrive: My stuff is kinda their stuff.
• GDrive: Sync'able Android client, SkyDrive: 3rd party Android client that downloads data only.
• SkyDrive: 7GB (25GB) great for free, GDrive: 5GB is for wusses.

I think Microsoft has a winner on it's hands if it can finish migrating the Mesh stuff into the SkyDrive desktop client and release a real Android client. It would be great for W8 if they integrated the SkyDrive desktop client into Explorer and expose stuff like sharing options in the ribbon.

Not using the client yet but the SkyDrive homepage definitely appears to run faster/smoother than ever before. It used to be very slow when showing my files and galleries - although who could complain about 25 GB free storage. So kudos for that.

That's pretty much how I feel. I currently have the following stuff shared in Mesh: a peer-only share (the folder is called FolderShare for historical reasons ) which contains stuff that I need on my PC and laptop but don't need in the cloud and is generally too large for it anyway. A SkyDrive shared folder for really important stuff that I want to be able to access anywhere. I also share (peer-only) my VS Code Snippets folder and my IE favourites.

With the new SkyDrive client, I can do only one of those. If they truly intend to discontinue Mesh, that means I need to find a third-party syncing solution (even though I know I can trick SkyDrive into syncing favourites and code snippets, I need a peer-only syncing solution).

Additionally, I have lots of stuff on my regular SkyDrive that I don't need synced between my machines. My laptop has only a 160GB SDD drive, space is precious, so I don't want to have GBs of stuff from SkyDrive on there that I don't need just so I can sync the stuff that I do need. I have previously said I didn't like the separation between SkyDrive's regular storage and Mesh's synced storage, but what I meant was that Mesh's synced storage should just be a folder in the regular SkyDrive UI. Not that it should become mandatory to sync everything you have on SkyDrive. An option to select which SkyDrive folders you actually want to sync would be most welcome.

I'm waiting for the June release of Windows 8 preview before I give it a try. I don't want to set things up only to have to redo it again in about a month.

I'm disappointed that the Mac OS X client doesn't support synching symbolically linked directories.  Dropbox handles this just fine.  I would love to switch to SkyDrive; perhaps the next client upgrade will address this shortcoming.

I always like SkyDrive, but, I disabled SkyDrive PC Client. Because when it logon and it starts to spin with crazy data download, I just feel bad and ended it. All the photos on SkyDrive is not for sync, it is only for online sharing, so, I really don't need them to be downloaded on my desktop. I just want to sync very specific folder, like Mesh.

Also when I unsync before I download everything, and when I resync, it has some kind of warning that I am not entire sure what it means. All I know is, it is scary and I will rather delete the entire folder and start over again.

I hope I can have Upload+Download Only Option, meaning no delete or modify. I want the photo folders to be restricted from my accidents.

My dream scenario would be that skydrive was just a background service that is enabled by default. A service that automatically provides me with backup of all my app data, personal settings and my documents and access to them from other devices.

There shouldn't be any skydrive folders like to day ... you should be able to make any folder a skydrive folder ...

I guess my dream scenario is the original vision for Mesh and before that ... hailstorm

The fact that SkyDrive doesn't allow syncing of arbitrary folders is super annoying. So I wrote a small ShellExtension that is doing the job. http://janhannemann.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/sync-any-folder-to-skydrive/

Go and get it if you like it.  

The icons are fine on my machine - most of the times

Cool ... Seems to be working just fine. Thank you

Cool ... Seems to be working just fine. Thank you

Anyone know of a good third-party replacement for Live Mesh? I like the SkyDrive app but some of the features it dropped (ability to selectively sync certain folders only on certain PCs) are features I'd still like to have for certain things. I can keep on using Live Mesh but not sure I want to if it's dead code walking.

I read some of this thread before but didn't really get what you guys where doing because I hadn't tested out the new SkyDrive much yet.
NOW I see what you mean.

I just opened up Ableton Live and most of my projects in the Recently Opened menu where greyed out and it was quite scary. (they're mostly backed up on an external drive though)
To test out the SkyDrive client I uploaded a whole bunch of those project folders to SkyDrive but it's only now, a few days later, that I realised what it does.

IT MOVED all those files to another folder.

That really IS annoying. This is going to scare allot of people when they can't find their important stuff anymore.

Section31's ShellExtension looks promising but I'm not sure if I want to mess with this anymore.

@dentaku I have not heard of any problems with my ShellExtension yet. Just give SkyDrive another shot. It's 25GB free cloud spcaes Nobody else has this and Dropbox/GDrive has the same limmitation as far as I know.

I think what you've done is great (don't get me wrong) but obviously I'm not the only person who dragged files into the SkyDrive folder NOT thinking it was going to act like a normal folder and actually MOVE to files. It was scary for a minute there before I realised what had happened.

I'd be happy if SkyDrive simply gave me a folder-like window that showed me everything on my SkyDrive and let me drag stuff into it. Basically I'd like to be able to use SkyDrive like an old fashioned FTP client, likeFileZilla.
If the website let me upload entire folders and choose more than one file at a time I wouldn't even need to PC client.

The way it works now (without your ShellExtension) you have to Copy and Paste files/folders to the SkyDrive folder if you want to keep them in their original location which of course is a waste of drive space because you end up with 2 copies of everything.

I'm sure the way it works now is great for certain people but it's just still not what I expected.
I guess I'm not an "average user"

Maybe they'll update SyncToy to sync with SkyDrive.