In the last year I have forked out way too much money to buy
into the cloud. in fact at last count I believe I paid 475 dollars, and you
know what? technology moves ahead at an ALARMING rate. prices go down services
and applications improve the market becomes more and more competitive and it
feels like I am standing in the dust of the rest of you who waited. Like smart
people.
Google of course leads in prices. with only 1.99 a month for
100 gigabytes it just makes sense if you love Google like everyone does to stay
with them as they centralize all your storage. The one other thing I love about
Google is they are updating and improving nearly every week new changes occur I
believe that they will be the one milestone of today's generation...
And yet Free is a very attractive word.
Now remember, If you have material that you want to put on
someone else's computer have some brains. First off its their computer and if
they want to play with what you thought was your stuff then really it was you
who plays the fool. as Facebook has already proven that your personal photos
might show up being sold to advertisers. this happens. as well DropBox censors
and reports, as they ought to, to the US government any materials, photographs
etc that they thing might seem dark, nasty, child harmful etc. so no, don't
just use the cloud to hide your trash, that's not what its meant for. What it
is meant for, mainly is sharing.
I use the cloud 3 ways. 1 is to share photos and documents.
I download a photo to my hard drive I upload it to the cloud I get the URL link
by right clicking on the photo and then paste it into an email or hundreds of
other places and now friends and forums can have access to that material, BTW this works with
music and Video up to 5 Gigabytes in some places however be ready to have a
smart answer if someone shares this link to the true owners of that video and
you are sued for piracy!
The second reason I use the cloud is to sync my stuff. and
this is way important for me. I am ridiculous, gone are the days I relied on my
one home computer. Why lets see I have 3 active computers at home if you count
my lap top I have two tablets and my android that makes six. with the cloud I
can upload a tune, and then its instantly shared to all six devices, this is
called syncing. of course you have to be smart here too. my tablets only have
32 gigs of space and if you set up syncing that fills up pretty fast. still
syncing is wonderful. I can put a bunch of movies into the sync folder then
take my laptop on holiday. once in the hotel I open the lap top and the movies
are already on the hard drive so there you are. quick and simplified transfer.
The last reason I use the cloud is to archive, not back up
but archive. Started with Evernote. which has the ability to clip from the web
and save it by date in a huge very long file that NEVER deletes. in effect it
archives everything you find interesting. Evernote has evolved. now I can clip
only photos or portions of the web page or only articles. this is so handy for
me. Now Google as we expected got into the racket. it has the capability to
pull from your documents folder any document you wrote and place it into its
drive so you have it there for your laptop later or, what if your home PC
crashers? its there all safe and sound.
So then finally I bet you want to know the scoop, where do
you get good free service.
Well good is relative. first I look for space of course,
then I consider the reputation - if the company has only been out for one year
I fear that they might go under or change their policies too fast, as Just
Cloud did [if you have them I fear for you]. And finally I need to know what
kind of interface they have. let me explain and give you a few links.
Space Wise the amazing best has to be the 7 Gigs to .360 TB
services.
They are: Copy with
15 Gigs
Google
with 15 Gigs
and MEO
Cloud. with 16 Gigs up to 32 if you invite friends to enjoy free account.
Of these Three Google Drive is the best, the company
is trusted it has many applications to benefit.
Copy is New but tons of people love it. its fast as
well. I can sync a 2 gigabyte movie from one PC to the other in less than 5
minutes that's pretty fast
MEO has a lot of people talking, but its a foreign
company and foreign governments might have you face changes faster than you
like so be on the alert.
The above are the favorites I have found the next set are
less desirable though they do have their perks
First with 360GB Called 360CloudDisk or Yunpan a Chinese based gem,
This group is very new, started in January 2014. And frankly I cant see any
need to have so much space, but its free. This company And MEO are foreign and
you will need to be ready to translate page after page to register but I did it
and I have it. so its not impossible
IDrive gives 5-10
One
Drive gives 7
Yandex
gives 10
DropBox (varies from .5
up to what I got at 27.5, using referrals and bonus)
Amazon
Cloud Drive gives 5
And I found SEVERAL which give tons of space for free which
I totally said no to
why? its the last priority INTERFACE.
Most Cloud services are very keen on making actually
transferring files from your PC to their cloud a snap. They have you download a
client which permits you to place a folder into your PC, all you do is copy and
paste the file you want put into the cloud into their folder and without any
further thought its transferred.
When I realized
that there are archaic idiots who think we would be interested in a cloud that
did not have an interface like this I about flipped. Be certain that before you
agree to any contract you get a chance to try before you buy and you see if
they have a desk tool or desk client or you will not be happy.
The last thing is
applications. these are tools that add fun and productivity to your cloud. I
wish there was a service which made working all my separate clouds easier.
there is SME which I paid for but they don't handle all of the clouds.
I find that
DropBox and Google drive have tons of bells and whistles. but I have only been
doing the cloud game for 15 months and the game changes so fast. so I don't
base my choice of services on their applications that's always changing.
My last suggestion
is if you do need dedicated no nonsense cloud sync just use Google, they charge
month to month its only 1.99 I have had run ins with them on magazine orders
they always refund my money always quick to answer questions best reputation.
but yea, sign up for the other services. Google's free service is only 15Gigs
if you don't want to pay any more, I say start with Google then "Copy", if you
think you need more than 30 easy Gigs refer to the list above. ♥
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