OneDrive, successor to SkyDrive by Microsoft

Today, Microsoft published "OneDrive", a free cloud storage service for each user of Windows, iOS, and Android. It is a revision of SkyDrive.

OneDrive.com: OneDrive is Now Available Worldwide: Free Cloud Storage for Microsoft, iOS, and Android Devices

I have utilized this kind of service for some years since during Microsoft offered Windows Live Mesh. It was a simple program to synchronize the data in multiple Windows PCs. It enabled me to continue some tasks with my PC in my study without transfer the electrical data from my office PC manually. I felt it convenient. Meanwhile, SkyDrive had been launched. But I did not use it because it looked a little complicated.

Just one year ago, Microsoft stopped to offer Windows Live Mesh, perhaps to encourage the users to transfer to SkyDrive. I unwillingly introduced SkyDrive. Fortunately, I got accustomed to use it soon.

By the way, SkyDrive is a cool name, I think. It had a good affinity of sense for Windows Azure, a cloud platform by Microsoft.

On the other hand, I do not think SkyDrive is an excellent service. It sometimes causes some troubles. Recently, I lost some data due to a failure of SkyDrive. In addition, Microsoft often updated the system of it. The volume of free to use cloud storage was dramatically reduced from 25 GB to 7 GB. Furthermore, at the same time of introduction of Windows 8.1, the configuration of SkyDrive was changed so that offline use of SkyDrive folders became unavailable at default setting. I was confused for a while.

Therefore, I am afraid to be involved in some troubles due to OneDrive.

Microsoft newly offers 3 GB storage in addition to current 7 GB for photo synchronizing. OneDrive program installed in a Smartphone uploads any photo images taken by the machine into cloud storage for a backup automatically. This function is similar to Google+ powered by Google. It means it is possible that unintentional ban will occur as I mentioned before. We should be cautious.

Microsoft declares to perform some campaigns regarding OneDrive. A total of 100 thousand users have a chance to get 100 GB more storage for one year. Microsoft will announce the event via Twitter @OneDrive. I am waiting for subsequent reports. But I am not certain if I will gain the prize, since there are 500 thousand followers of @OneDrive.