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Microsoft to Offer Free Online Storage
athloi writes "Microsoft Corp. is giving computer users up to 500 megabytes of online storage for their documents, music, photos and video. They're offering it to a select 5,000 test users for now, but will make it widely available later this summer. This move is the latest in a series by the previous large corporation we all loved to hate to compete with the newest large corporation we might hate and fear, Google."
Frankly, MS, that's smaller than my current USB drive, and that drive isn't actually very large by today's standards. And it has faster access, too.
It's easier, when I want to store something, to GMail it to myself. They have over 5X this amount of storage -- and aren't Microsoft!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Wait what? We hate who... I can guess we all dislike MS, but I dont think fear or hate should be in the same sentence with Google.
This is an obvious honeypot ploy to draw unsuspecting, God-fearing users everywhere to upload their copywrong material and thereby indict themselves for extraordinary rendering by a nefarious acronym.
Run away! Run away!
These stories are free but worth money.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Now, call me ungrateful, but 500 megs? Let's see what such a service could be good for.
... erh ... content whose copyright I cannot claim legally, I'd again choose anything BUT Microsoft.
1. Offsite backup.
2. Making your data "mobile", by making it available wherever you are.
3. Transfering your data to another machine (local or remote).
4. Distributing data
Should anyone have other ideas, please share them.
Well, for 1, I'd choose pretty much anything BUT Microsoft. They aren't really the company that comes to my mind when it comes to data security.
For 2, there are USB sticks. Now, you may argue that they cost money while this service is free, but c'mon, 500 megs? I just gave away a 1GB USB stick 'cause it was too small for my needs, and sticks in the 500m region don't cost a fortune.
For transfer, locally I'd suggest USB as well and for remote, connect the machines directly.
And for distribution, especially of
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Profit from what exactly? Having at&t (note the lowercase) cancelling your subscription because you're excedding the unlimited upload bandwitch?
The only 32GB limit Microsoft imposes is the maximum FAT32 partition size you can create with Windows 2000 and higher. They can access bigger FAT32 partitions, just not create them.
If I'm wrong, I'm sure someone will tell me.
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
> I bet they rely on two things:
> Most people will only use a fraction of that storage
> Most people will store highly compressible documents
That would be a pretty bad bet, since ONE movie video breaks both of those bets.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat