SkyDrive gets no love?

I don't understand why I'm seeing virtually no press on SkyDrive. I'm constantly seeing DropBox, SugarSync and even the yet to be released GDrive in the online tech press.

Just signed up, downloaded the iPhone app... 25 GB FOR FREE!!! Are you F-ing kidding me?

The app works fantastically! I can push all my photos and videos to the cloud and float videos from home to anywhere. It's fast too.

Does MS not provide press releases to the big tech press players? Why isn't everyone using SkyDrive? It's 25GB of free storage which is at least 5 times more than what Box.Net is offering for free.

What am I missing here?

Because it doesn't run on anything except Windows and iPhone, has bloated crappy software, and spend more time jerking off to Microsoft's other offerings (e.g. Office) than it does providing a good product. 

@itsnotabug:

The only thing I can think of is, it doesn't make any money. But, I could say the same to WMP, IE, Paint, and various free things that comes with Windows, so, my argument doesn't really apply.

1 hour ago, ManipUni wrote

Because it doesn't run on anything except Windows and iPhone, has bloated crappy software, and spend more time jerking off to Microsoft's other offerings (e.g. Office) than it does providing a good product. 

Are you sure we're talking about the same Skydrive? The one that works on any platform that has a browser?

okay i probably should've put it to its paces a bit more...

1) the file size limit needs to be increased. 100Mb isn't really usable for video

2) moving files around is a bit fiddly

3) desperately needs a way to batch upload/download

4) the folder sync (mesh) is limited to only 5Gb,

but still, I think it's useful for music and photos. hopefully these things will be tweaked in the future.

@itsnotabug:

agree on most parts, except #3.

You can download all in a zip under one folder. And you can upload multiple files into one folder. But, yeah, you cannot upload an actual folder (may contains sub-folders), which maybe what you are talking about.

Because you need to go through all this crap to figure out how to connect via WebDAV:

http://www.mikeplate.com/2010/01/17/how-to-connect-to-skydrive-with-webdav/

17 hours ago, ManipUni wrote

Because it doesn't run on anything except Windows and iPhone, has bloated crappy software, and spend more time jerking off to Microsoft's other offerings (e.g. Office) than it does providing a good product. 

It runs in every browser I've tried (HTML5), and they're working on an Android app for it.

15 hours ago, itsnotabug wrote

okay i probably should've put it to its paces a bit more...

1) the file size limit needs to be increased. 100Mb isn't really usable for video

2) moving files around is a bit fiddly

3) desperately needs a way to batch upload/download

4) the folder sync (mesh) is limited to only 5Gb,

but still, I think it's useful for music and photos. hopefully these things will be tweaked in the future.

I agree with all of your points. First on the list should be #3, followed by #4. I'm not sure why they put a limit on file size. I guess to prevent it being used to pirate movies?

It looks like Windows 8 will place Skydrive in the spotlight, so hopefully they can address these items before then.

Is it as easy to use as Dropbox yet? As in, can you set a local folder as a Skydrive folder and put files in there without ever having to bother with the browser?

@Bas: you can use mesh to sync a folder to your SkyDrive. I haven't set that up yet though.

as an aside, i just noticed that sugarsync lifted the file size limit on their free offering (although you have to load a soft advert page to download... this has upset a lot of people who used to use the direct download link embedded in their pages)

https://www.sugarsync.com/blog/2012/01/10/if-you-love-your-public-links-set-them-free/

17 hours ago, itsnotabug wrote

*snip*

3) desperately needs a way to batch upload/download

*snip*

You can drag and drop multiple files to upload.

You can also multi-select files, and they download as a single ZIP file.

Post removed at user's request.

@bystander:

With the old mesh client there was an explorer extension that let you share a folder via mesh. Once shared it would display with a blue folder icon. That of course went away when they implemented the crappy mesh client in WL wave 3 where they merged it with Live Stync. It's too bad because mesh was great in beta -- award winning and everything. Sure its Vista-esk UI was a bit dated but they didn't need to remove functionality to update the UI. At least it's consistent with Microsoft's "also-ran" theme they seem to have going on these days.

@bystander:

I think it is pretty easy for me. Login in Mesh App. I think it automatically sync all folders that are already in the cloud. At least that's what I remembered, the folder from cloud just appears on my desktop automatically.

But yeah, there is many quirkiness with Mesh. Like it is hard to access the cloud via browser. You need to get to some strange place called "Device" and you have to set mobile browser to "desktop mode" to access the Mesh without installing the app.

Post removed at user's request.

Mesh was fantastic. I don't understand why they dropped it. They had big plans for it too, such as putting it in the car.

I tried to get my Dad using Skydrive (he's a big Apple fan) and he was immediately turned off that he couldn't drag folders of photos into the Photos folder on Skydrive.

Microsoft has great ideas, but they seem to never get them 100% right, whereas Apple has good ideas but always get them 100% right. All they needed to do was take Live Mesh and put the storage on Skydrive. Instead they took a mediocre Live Sync and added a smattering of Mesh features to it.

I'll add the note that yesterday, I saw big AD from Nokia in MTR station, promoting their phone can use SkyDrive and other service.

I have no idea whether the AD is co-sponsered, though.