Windows Live SkyDrive Launches, 5GB of Free Storage

skydrive_logo Microsoft has just raised the beta banner from their Windows Live SkyDrive storage service. With this announcement, they are expanding to more countries and providing 5 GB of free storage.

In addition to Great Britain, India, and the U.S., we’re live in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Finland, France, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Turkey.

During initial beta testing, they opened up in just three countries (US, UK and India) and provided just 1 GB of storage space. At that time I was wondering if anybody would be satisfied with 1 GB of storage space. Back then AOL’s Xdrive service was providing 5GB of free storage for their users.

SkyDrive provides RSS feed for your folders, which means subscribers can easily receive notifications as new files are added to that folder. Downsides include lack of upload tools. You’ll have to choose between web interface and an ActiveX component for Internet Explorer. Considering the fact that SkyDrive is from Microsoft, I expect something like an Explorer App, which will show-up SkyDrive as a drive in My Computer.

I haven’t really test SkyDrive for myself, but it looks like a real competitor in storage business now. How long will it take for Google to come-up own storage service (rumours about GDrive or Platypus have been going on for years now!)

This post was published by on February 22, 2008

About the Author: Thilak Rao works as a Social Media Expert. He is one of the first professional bloggers from India, and he loves to write, travel and click photos. Follow him on Twitter @thilak

  • http://www.gadgets4nowt.co.uk Steve Elliott

    Sounds like a workable concept but not much good (for me personally) until someone makes a plugin for Firefox. My bet is that is a good way off.

  • http://www.rapidsharetools.com RapidMaster

    The interface is still a bit slow at times, specially while creating folders.