Microsoft Skydrive LogoThis is my review of Microsoft Skydrive. Skydrive allows you to "Store, organise, and download your files, photos, and favourites on Windows Live servers, and access them from any computer with an Internet connection". To be able to access skydrive all you require is a Hotmail address, or a Windows Live ID. The amount of storage you get is really quite good, once you sign in you have 25Gb available to use, I don't know of another service that gives you that much space for free straight away.
Microsoft say the skydrive will work on IE (obviously), Firefox and Safari both on Windows and Mac. I found it did work fine on Chrome although I had some difficulties when trying to insert pictures into my PowerPoint presentation using the Webapp but this must of been down to the internet connection because since then I have used Chrome and have not encountered any issues, it seems to work fine on both Windows and MacOS.
With the new webapps that are featured in Skydrive you can Edit, Share or Create new documents using the following applications:
- Word
- Excel
- PowerPoint
- OneNote
From here you can access them via the desktop version of the products so you can have full access to all the editing functions, the good thing is the document will automatically be saved into your skydrive account. An important point to note about Skydrive is you don't need to have the desktop applications installed to use the Webapps. You can create a Word document, Excel spreadsheet etc from scratch directly in Skydrive.
When you have documents stored in the cloud you can easily share them out with other members of your team so you can collaborate on the document at the same time. Instead of me talking you through how this works, I think it would be better for you to see it in action, so I have the video below which demonstrates it.
You can share your documents and photos directly onto Facebook and LinkedIn very easily with one click. With regards to the photos they now have geo-tagging support so you can spot on a map where the photos have been taken. With regards to the documents, if you have your CV stored on skydrive you can send this up to your profile on LinkedIn, so when ever you make a change to the document then you know that it will still be the most up to date copy on your profile.
With regards to the photos, I have one gripe about this, there is no Twitter integration, where as I think it should have the options to share your photo. You can share photos to twitter, but you need to use the application to copy the shared link you create and then paste that into twitter. With regards to the links again I think that there should be a URL shortener built in, as the links you get are not small as you can see here, https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=ea341d0110ace6df&resid=EA341D0110ACE6DF!127&parid=EA341D0110ACE6DF!141, would not be easy to mention that link, you can put it through tinyurl or bit.ly yourself but it just adds another step. I am sure that this will included to Skydrive in the near future.
I personally will use skydrive in the future, it does have some nice features, I like the way you can easily create folders and organise all you documents. It has excellent integration with the Office Suite of applications, and it makes it very easy to collaborate on documents with other members of the team, plus with 25Gb off storage available from the outside for FREE it makes it very attractive.
Right now you can get the mobile application for Windows Phone and for iPhone. I have used the iPhone application and it worked very well on the day, I am not sure if there is an Android version coming shortly.
Below are a couple of links so you can read up more about Skydrive
http://explore.live.com/skydrive
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/
I am always looking at ways to improve, and so I am always interested in feedback so feel free to add any comments to the site, or you can email me here.