Microsoft yesterday took Windows Live SkyDrive out of beta and released it to the public. This means, users with a Live ID account can sign in and receive 5GB of free storage.
Files can be private, shared to specific people, or made public for anyone to see. Where I see SkyDrive being heavily used is from users wanting to post photos on forums. Users are currently forced to use services like Photo Bucket and others that have bandwidth requirements. Which means if a forum thread is popular, images fail to load, resulting in a pretty bad experience for forums.
5GB will probably not be enough to backup your entire digital photo collection, however if you want to transfer a file larger than permissible by email, then SkyDrive will come in very handy.
It’s obviously early days for SkyDrive, as there’s a number of improvements I could suggest right now which I think should have been there from the start.
My list of suggested improvements to SkyDrive:
– Ability to move files from between folders
– Ability to increase storage for an annual fee.
– Ability to delete multiple files.
– Ability to upload photos directly from Windows Live Photo Gallery (currently only Live Spaces, Flickr).
I’ve suggested these upgrades by clicking the banner at the top, if you have suggestions for improvements, you should do the same.
If you want to check it out, visit http://SkyDrive.live.com
