OneDrive why not?

Here's one for the lounge. Due to the recent sudden irretrievable demise of my wife's iPhone which she cannot live without (for quite legitimate reasons) I had to give her mine until a replacement could be arranged. I had a standby Nokia Lumia 520 Windows phone which I had bought as a spare smart phone some time ago. Apart from being a bargain on special for less than $200.00 I was curious to see what it had for offer and Androids were much more expensive anyway.
Well I have to say I was impressed but I wont go into all of the reasons now, suffice to say that for a cheap smart phone it is very good value.
One of the interesting and unexpected aspects of this phone was and is it's syncing service. I had a mostly unused old Hotmail account so I used it to register on what was then called SkyDrive now called OneDrive. My old Hotmail account was then combined into a new @live.com account.
The OneDrive service is essentially the same as iCloud for Apple devices and does all of the same things, especially when set up with the OneDrive for Mac and the Windows Phone for Mac app's BUT more than that the combined accounts give me 30Gb of free online storage.
Even if you don't have a Windows phone or a PC kicking around the house that amount of free storage is not to be sneezed at especially when iCloud only offers 5Gb free.
So my point is don't be so blind as to deny what others offer or see where they may be better.
I am using this space to store a bunch of Word .docs and with online editing facilities this is very practical and convenient. I can share the documents via email as well as freeing up a little space on my MBP I can access them all on my windows phone.

Sorry regulators, I meant to post this in Schweb's Lounge. Now I cant work out how to move it but I have worked out how to do it in the future.

Not sure this is even a Lounge topic, but I moved it here anyway.

OneDrive has been available for some time and is a requirement for those who wish to use MS Office on line. It works (as document storage) for both the iOS version of MS Office and Office on line from your Mac. If you still have SkyDrive on your Mac, it will be re-designated as OneDrive.

(And only moderators can move posts once they have been uploaded.)

Thanks chscag, I've worked out how to post to Schweb's lounge now so I won't do that again.
I suppose I think of Schweb's lounge as a general discussion forum and really I had been aware of One Drive for a while but don't use MS Office online so had not thought of it as a stand alone application for data storage which it really is via the OneDrive app as well as an extra email address (handy for privacy and online purchases).
Things are progressively moving towards more and more online storage and although iCloud is tailored to Mac users it seems to me that any form of free backup storage is worth taking advantage of.
You have to admit 15Gb is pretty generous as much as I hate to say it being a sort of dedicated Mac user for so long. I wonder how long it will be before Apple offers the same?
Perhaps when full iPhoto backup is out of beta?

To be fair, 20GB of iCloud storage is a whopping $12 a year, so while OneDrive offers more you have to buy specific devices on a specific platform in order to get that extra free space.

Also, it should be pointed out that while OneDrive works very well, I can use it just as easily on my iPhone, and I believe I'm correct in saying Android users can take advantage of it as well. Whereas if I'm on Windows Phone, I can't use iCloud (or any of the integrated services that go with it). So the iOS platform continues to offer the advantage of more options.

I guess I am old school.. I keep everything on MY drive.. LOL Way to paranoid to put things on someone else's server and have it cracked and stolen. But I can really see the potential in using it professionally if I was sharing files with co-workers in a corporate setting.. But I am retired and sit at home daily..

HOWEVER! ADOBE, HINT HINT! Needs to implement Lightroom to start backing up my catalog to its server incase I switch computers or even more importantly forget to back the file up like I did last month and delete it when I formatted my system drive..

chas_m said:

To be fair, 20GB of iCloud storage is a whopping $12 a year, so while OneDrive offers more you have to buy specific devices on a specific platform in order to get that extra free space.

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Wrong. If not, please cite your source. OneCloud starts with 15 GB free across the board. You get an extra 3 GB free if you enable automatic photo syncing and 5 GB for referrals. They had a promotion back in September that gave you 15 GB for auto photo syncing instead of the usual 3 GB. Rod said he was getting 30 GB by combining accounts, not by "buying specific devices on a specific platform".
https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/
How to double your free OneDrive storage to 30GB | PCWorld

Also, it should be pointed out that while OneDrive works very well, I can use it just as easily on my iPhone, and I believe I'm correct in saying Android users can take advantage of it as well. Whereas if I'm on Windows Phone, I can't use iCloud (or any of the integrated services that go with it). So the iOS platform continues to offer the advantage of more options.

Click to expand...

Wait, so Apple denies use of iCloud to any other platform while MS et al don't have this artificial limitation, and this makes the iOS platform the better choice? When OneDrive can be used on any platform? You are actually making an argument here against iCloud. The only thing iCloud is really good for is syncing data between iOS devices and OS X. That's all fine and dandy if you are tied to Apple's ecosystem, but if you need/want to stray from it, iCloud has no advantage whatsoever.

Your turn to be wrong, Lifeisabeach. I didn't say, nor imply, that iCloud wasn't available to any other platform. It is, as I'm sure you must know, available to Windows users. Pretty sure that counts as a separate platform.

It is not, however, available to Windows Phone to the best of my knowledge, nor to Android users *as an app,* though I don't know if it's available via browser on those platforms. The point I was trying to make is, and may have expressed poorly, is that by using the best mobile platform (iOS), I can utilize ANY of these services. If I'm on Windows Phone, I'm cut off from most of them in terms of native apps, as few developers bother with the WP platform. Not intended as a ding on WP, just a reality of the platform and its app limitations.

Sort of like my argument against buying a Kindle anymore: why lock yourself in to one bookstore? On iOS I can have Kindle books, Nook books, Kobo books, iBooks books ... any and all bookstores, essentially.

chas_m said:

Your turn to be wrong, Lifeisabeach. I didn't say, nor imply, that iCloud wasn't available to any other platform. It is, as I'm sure you must know, available to Windows users. Pretty sure that counts as a separate platform.

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Actually I didn't know that. I stand corrected on that much.

It is not, however, available to Windows Phone to the best of my knowledge, nor to Android users *as an app,* though I don't know if it's available via browser on those platforms. The point I was trying to make is, and may have expressed poorly, is that by using the best mobile platform (iOS), I can utilize ANY of these services. If I'm on Windows Phone, I'm cut off from most of them in terms of native apps, as few developers bother with the WP platform. Not intended as a ding on WP, just a reality of the platform and its app limitations.

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That was the point you made, and quite clearly. The problem is that there's nothing special about iCloud that makes it an overriding factor in choosing a platform. It's a weakness, if anything, because it's not available cross-platform (ahem... ok, so it is in Windows) except maybe in a browser. The file sharing feature is pathetic. Well maybe not the sharing feature so much now, but my wife and I have a couple apps that we share data for (iBank, for example) and we can't use iCloud Drive for syncing (it's not an option, but couldn't be even if it was) because we can't write data to each others' accounts. Not unless we start using the same account on our devices/Mac, which we keep separate for good reasons. Oh, and don't forget how, on the Mac platform, Apple now limits access to iCloud by apps sold through the Mac App Store. I avoid the MAS because their sandboxing rules hobble so many features compared to the non-MAS counterparts. I don't know if OneDrive has similar limitations, but honestly it doesn't matter. It just means that selecting a platform based on the cloud services offered by the developer of the OS is just downright silly. Now WP's weak selection of native apps MIGHT be a downside... it all depends on your needs and expectations. I'm using my iPhone increasingly less for anything but some basic on-the-go needs and I know full well WP can fill those needs. So please, get off your high horse and just accept that not everyone uses their devices the same way you do. This smug "iOS has more and better apps" just reeks of the excuse Windows users made against Macs for decades.

Sort of like my argument against buying a Kindle anymore: why lock yourself in to one bookstore? On iOS I can have Kindle books, Nook books, Kobo books, iBooks books ... any and all bookstores, essentially.

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There are plenty of good reasons to buy a Kindle or other eReader (the e-ink ones, not the tablet ones). My wife and I have Kobo Auras and we both have iPads and the reading experience on the e-ink display is far superior. Besides those eReaders being FAR cheaper than an iPad, they also have much better battery life; are far more readable outdoors than a tablet; are MUCH lighter; and the e-ink tech is much easier on the eyes.