The cloud computing bug seems to have caught everyone- and rightly so. While computers and laptops are extremely convenient, a minute virus can erase everything on your device in a jiffy and that is where cloud computing comes in- a sort of online application in layman terms. Getting your files back is no longer a pain in the neck as cloud storage apps automatically back up any files you have saved on your hard drive. Yet, all is not gold as far as this remarkable technology is concerned. One thing that needs to be considered is the amount of bandwidth; data can take a long time in uploading. But you do have options and there are several companies that offer cloud services to choose from.
Skydrive
Major companies offering this service include: Microsoft, Google and Dropbox. Microsoft offers Skydrive which is ideal for a person using Windows since it works smoothly with Microsoft office and Windows Phone. For those who do not have Windows, Skydrive has an app for Android, iOS and Mac. It is convenient to create and save a document on user’s Skydrive. This feature is otherwise known as web-based collaborative document editing, also offered by Google Drive. Skydrive also has two additional features; it can be incorporated with Xbox 360 and Microsoft offers free email with Microsoft’s LIVE email service.
GDrive
Other than offering all the conventional cloud storage features, Google Drive can be used with Google’s other applications such as Google Docs, Google+ and Gmail. It works on Android, iOS, Mac and Windows as well. Its distinct feature is that users can instantly save their photos in the cloud as soon as they take the picture from their phone. While Google Drive is easy to use and files attached to mail can simply be shared, viewed and edited from there, it does have a drawback. Files have to be converted to Google format before uploading which is not too much of a hindrance but can prove to be irksome due to conversion issues.
DropBox
By far, the easiest cloud storage application to use is Dropbox which works on almost all operating systems including Symbian, Blackberry and Linux. The process is also fairly easy to understand; simply install Dropbox which will create a typical folder on your desktop and any file saved in it is automatically backed up on cloud. Samsung phone and tablet users have an added advantage here with free 50GB space for two years.
While relatively simpler, Dropbox is also fairly pricey as compared to Google Drive and Skydrive. So looking at it that way, the decision to be made is really divided between the latter two. Of course, it depends on which company applications the user is already making use of. Users will also need to bear in mind that uploading large amounts of data takes time and requires a large amount of bandwidth.
