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Microsoft Plans Gdrive Competitor

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the personal-virtual-bill dept.

gambit3 writes "From Microsoft Watch: The MSN team is working on a new Windows Live service, code-named Live Drive, that will provide users with a virtual hard drive for storing hosted personal data. From early accounts, it sounds an awful lot like Gdrive, the still-as-yet-publicly-unannounced storage service from Google."

6 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. free? by joe+155 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How free will this be, I meen both in speach and beer... I would like to see exactly what they would do with each file I upload (i might be paranoid and not having anything too important anyway)... I am also a little concerned about what might happen if the US govt. asks for all my data on their drives (again probably too paranoid)... also I like cheap things

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    *''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
  2. Even if the RIAA manages to ... by ScrewMaster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    shut down peer-to-peer (or simply make people too afraid to use it), I predict that file-sharing will continue unabated as social networks form around these vast online storage facilities. Rather than having to download my music piecemeal, I can just grab someone's entire "g" or "i" or "m" or whatever drive full of gigabytes of tunes. A couple of online swaps and that 60 Gb iPod is going to seem a tad cramped.

    Cool.

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    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  3. "Live [blank]" is today's "Active [blank]" by Maxmin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Local Live, Live Drive ... ActiveX, Active Desktop,

    I keep noticing the trend: Microsoft gives their product names a prefix or suffix that adds a sporty/jaunty sense, without changing the name's meaning.

    Pure marketing. In the 80s they prefixed their software with "Microsoft" ... everything had to be "Microsoft [blank]." I liked that, gives strong brand identity. But the Live and Active monkiers are a bit confusing, as they don't contribute a consistent, useful meaning.

    --
    O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
  4. So... by Skynet · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Microsoft's big secret Web 2.0 push is to copy everything Google does?

    OIC!

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    Execute? [Y/N] _
  5. need more than bandwidth for this by acvh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    mounting a drive over the Internet (do we still capitalize that?) involves much OS overhead as well, and that is very slow. during my brief, free, usage of .Mac and its iDrive I was frustrated more than anything else. perhaps if the OS is modified to strip out some of what it does when you mount a drive they can speed it up, but for now FTP serves me better.

    1. Re:need more than bandwidth for this by Sparky9292 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      mounting a drive over the Internet (do we still capitalize that?) involves much OS overhead as well, and that is very slow. during my brief, free, usage of .Mac and its iDrive I was frustrated more than anything else. perhaps if the OS is modified to strip out some of what it does when you mount a drive they can speed it up, but for now FTP serves me better.

      Yeah, I bought the .Mac package this year and I was suprised at how slow it is just to traverse directories. Apple needs to make it's .Mac technology as speedy as a normal FTP site. I don't know why it's that slow. I'm running on 256KB/s upload as well.

      Now it's cool to have autosyncronization of bookmarks, addressbooks, and certain folders; but the slowness of .Mac is something they need to work on.