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Microsoft To Begin Reducing Your Free OneDrive Cloud Storage Starting Today (betanews.com)

For those of you who forgot -- or didn't bother -- to keep the 15GB worth of OneDrive storage, starting today you will see a big change in your account. On Thursday, Microsoft will begin shrinking your 15GB OneDrive free storage to 5GB, and also cancel the 15GB storage it gave you as part of camera roll backup bonus. For its part, Microsoft did warn about the changes to people a couple of times over the past few months. It all started when Microsoft gave Office 365 subscribers unlimited OneDrive storage space. Many people abused this, uploading over 75TB worth of movies and other files in some cases. BetaNews reports: If you log into your OneDrive account and find that you still have the full storage quota available, don't be lulled into a false sense of security. The cuts are actually being spread out between July 13 and July 27. Unless you opted out of the change, you're out of luck.

33 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Abuse? by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you offer unlimited storage and someone uploads 75TB worth of data, they are not abusing the service but taking advantage of your generous offer. If you don't want 75TB of data, set a lower limit.

    --
    If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    1. Re:Abuse? by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you offer unlimited storage and someone uploads 75TB worth of data, they are not abusing the service but taking advantage of your generous offer. If you don't want 75TB of data, set a lower limit.

      Let's add to that.

      Offer unlimited storage, and when people upload 75TB worth of data it's abuse.

      But presenting misleading alerts to trick people into installing Windows10, that's perfectly acceptable.

      What I don't understand is:

      a) Why windows 10 users haven't filed a class-action suit against Microsoft, and
      b) Why the FTC hasn't dropped a hammer on Microsoft over this.

      The FTC seems to be the only federal agency that actually tries to benefit the people. They should be pounding Microsoft into the ground over the misleading alerts and unwanted upgrades.

    2. Re:Abuse? by Alumoi · · Score: 3, Funny

      But I embbed my videos in MS Office documents!

    3. Re:Abuse? by Ash-Fox · · Score: 2

      Offer unlimited storage, and when people upload 75TB worth of data it's abuse.

      How many TB isn't abuse again?

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
    4. Re:Abuse? by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 4, Informative

      Microsoft already set a pretty low bar with Windows ME and Vista.

      ME was unforgiveable. But Vista worked quite well with extra hardware like a quad-core processor and 4GB or more of RAM. Since I originally built my system for Vista, I had no problems running Windows 10.

      Tell me how well Vista worked with all of the peripherals it made instantly obsolete. I remember a group that over my loud objections, forced me to upgrade them to Vista. Then my favorite moment was announcing to them that they just bought themselves a slew of new printers and scanners.

      Vista eventually worked okay after the wide path of distruction it caused and nonfunctional machines it left from Vista Basic certified were buried.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    5. Re:Abuse? by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, you have been fooled by the marketing people. They say "unlimited" because they know it sounds good. If they don't mean "unlimited" then say "5 TB max" or "20GB max". But that doesn't sound as good on an advertisement. Don't apologize for the marketers. They know what they were doing.

    6. Re:Abuse? by TheCastro1689 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They're scumbag liars, and it should be illegal to advertise like that even with a disclaimer that is hard to read or flashed too short to read on screen.

    7. Re:Abuse? by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No it is abuse.
      It is like going to an all you can eat restaurant stay there for the whole day and eat all your meals there.
      Or just swiping all the pennies in the give a penny take a penny bin....

      In general when you have a free service. You should be grateful that it is free, and use it respecting all the other users. Storage is about $0.25 a gig (Assuming redundant drives) So that 75TB is about $18,000 worth of space for your free service. So for a company who has to share for a lot of people. They expect to spend a few bucks per user. However abuse is pushing past that amount.

      There really isn't a justification for being a dick

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    8. Re:Abuse? by dwillden · · Score: 2

      As to the Windows 10 users (assuming you mean those upgraded against their will): I imagine Microsoft will point out the benefits of moving as many users as possible to an up to date single OS structure versus trying to maintain and patch multiple versions. Promises to maintain older versions are fulfilled by moving users to current version. The maintenance and support is to move them to a more modern OS.
      They'll be able to point to how Apple has done with with both OSX (not always forced) and iOS (forced until the hardware can no longer handle the upgrades. As well as how that is the model most apps in the mobile environment use as well as most major browsers.

      Thus they are only following industry norms, nothing to punish them for. Just because so many of us are used to the need to hold off on upgrading to a new windows version until at least SP1 does not mean they can't change the paradigm and push all users really, really hard to update and achieve a more secure OS environment not having so many varieties of Windows out there to patch.

      The storage could be argued as a bait and switch.

      --
      I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
    9. Re:Abuse? by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      They should be pounding Microsoft into the ground over the misleading alerts and unwanted upgrades.

      They are missing a burden of proof. Microsoft can happily show stats of people who purchased Windows 10, are running Windows 10 without issues (there's a feedback option), the trial program they have for it, and their statistics also show that people are using Windows 7 despite being part of the free Windows 10 upgrade, and that there's an option to downgrade.

      With all of this in place the FTC basically don't have a chance.

    10. Re:Abuse? by chipschap · · Score: 2

      In quite a few "unlimited" plans I've seen there is fine print in the user agreement that specifies "reasonable" use, which can be just as meaningless, although Skype (and others) actually put a metric on it. I recall "unlimited" being defined as something like 10 hours per day or X number of calls to N different numbers in T amount of time. (Not sure if this is still the case.)

  2. Re:In other news. by geekmux · · Score: 2

    The sale of external hard drives, thumb drives, and sd cards are expected to skyrocket.

    Skyrocket? Yeah right.

    If the process isn't happening automagically for the end user, they won't back up their data. Copying files to external sources would actually take effort. Fuck that.

  3. So it begins... by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...the race to the cloud is a race to extract rent payments for users. Make no mistake: that is what it is about. The strategy is to give it away for free at first to get all of us to eventually pay a monthly fee for these services so the CFO can accurately forecast their quarterly revenue. In addition, once everything is moved to the cloud, you won't need a PC anymore. You can use a "cloud" enabled. Eventually this will be a requirement, and you will only be allowed on the Internet if you use an approved "cloud" device. If you don't, you might be a terrorist, or a pirate, or a pirate terrorist.

    1. Re:So it begins... by swb · · Score: 2

      What's so funny about this is that the short-sighted penny pinchers who are always howling about IT spending are the FIRST ones to flock to the cloud with this mistaken idea of how cheap and free the cloud is.

      Worse, I work for a SMB IT consultancy and our sales people gleefully sell cloud services (managed by someone else, not us) to these same customers when it's not even cheaper TCO over 4 years and without realizing that they are selling out the bedrock of their own business. And it's not even like the pennies worth of referral and "preferred partner" value we get is worth anything or not trivial to switch out for another "preferred provider".

      What is it about paying rent people find so appealing?

    2. Re:So it begins... by TheCastro1689 · · Score: 2

      They like the monthly spread and that it seems lower since there isn't an upfront cost. Also, it means they spend less and get a bonus short term. The US and most of Europe runs on quarterly profits and short sighted gains, 2% increase in revenue every year!

  4. Re:we need a firefox revolution by Mashiki · · Score: 2

    Too bad firefox has done a great job of burning all that good will in the tech industry and pissing off the people that they want to use their product. Notice how much their marketshare has dropped in the last ~5 years?

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  5. Uninstalled the app and haven't looked back by ryanmc1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I found about a month ago that the battery on my phone was draining really fast. Where I could usually go a day and half, it was down to just half a day. After digging around and looking at battery stats I found the culprit, onedrive, it was preventing my phone from sleeping. So I denied it the keep awake permission, but that didn't seem to help. Finally I completely uninstalled it. Honestly I have not missed it. Except for the fact that it is built into Windows I have no desire to ever use it again.

  6. Re:Abused? by NatasRevol · · Score: 2

    If you think unlimited *isn't* infinite, then what is it?

    Microsoft's poor word choice is their fault, not anyone else's.

    --
    There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
  7. What comes to mind? by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 2

    Offer unlimited storage, and when people upload 75TB worth of data it's abuse.

    How many TB isn't abuse again?

    Help me out.

    Before I answer, can you give me what you think the definition of "unlimited" is?

    Without looking it up, or asking or anything.

    When you read the word "unlimited", what comes to mind?

    1. Re:What comes to mind? by TheCastro1689 · · Score: 5, Funny

      No limits, unless it's like inflammable, that shit means flammable.

    2. Re:What comes to mind? by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 2

      Offer unlimited storage, and when people upload 75TB worth of data it's abuse.

      How many TB isn't abuse again?

      Help me out.

      Before I answer, can you give me what you think the definition of "unlimited" is?

      Definition? Unlimited means absolutely nothing to me. It is one of those words like Ultra! Super! Grade A!, Jumbo! SuperSized! Maximum!

      All just pointless undefined ad content marketing hyperbole that means absolutely nothing.

      The very nature of the physics involved puta an absolute upper limit on the amount of data either by speed or storage capacity.

      Without looking it up, or asking or anything.

      When you read the word "unlimited", what comes to mind?

      That I'm being played at best, and more likely plain lied to. I don't care because I know that people lie a lot, and believe that other people are stupid.

      Which is why I don't buy into "unlimited" anything. Cloud storage has used this technique from the beginning, and if people are foolish enough to think unlimited means infinite, and that Microsoft and other cloud providers are some benevolent Santa in the sky, eliminating any future storage costs, well, then perhaps they really aren't that smart.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    3. Re:What comes to mind? by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 2

      > Definition? Unlimited means absolutely nothing to me. It is one of those words like Ultra! Super! Grade A!, > Jumbo! SuperSized! Maximum!

      Ok, let's not focus too much on what you personally know. You can look it up in a book, perhaps even online. Then you'll know what the word means.

      Because words have static meanings, never to be changed. That's why we all speak olde English. Getrowe mn heorðgenat?

      Let me turn it around; when I saw you can store 10GB on my server, how many GB is that? What if I offer you 10,000GB? How about 10,000TB? 1,000,000PB? Is there some point where you give up treating it as something tangible that's part of a contract, and start treating it as something it's acceptable to lie about? Does the same principle apply to bandwidth, contract length etc? And if so, why? And do you think that it's better for consumers if companies, having stated this or that limit, were forced to stick to them, with some consequences for lying?

      What I think, and what I believe, is that many companies are not at all truthful, and since people allowed the first incorrect instances of "unlimited" to pass by some years ago, the word altered over time, to become something like Scotch tape, or Xerox copy. Something that every one refers to even though it might not be made by the companies they are referring to.

      And since unlimited doesn't mean much at all when used as a maximum value beyond which you cannot go, as opposed to say motorcycle racing, where you might have a 100 CC class, a 250CC class, a 500 cc class, and an unlimited class - which means if you can figure out how to stuff a million CC displacement engine onto a bit that you can ride, you can compete in that class. Unlimited. Beyond a certain displacement, with only practical limits.

      But when trying to use unlimited on devices with some serious constraints, and defining unlimited as infinite, well. perhaps we might try discussing how many angels can dance on the head os a pin.

      Anyhow, I have no particular hopes of budging you from your attempts to apply a dictionary definition to marketing hyperbole. Doing that simply appears to be at odds with reality.

      But for some odd reason, when they - or anyone - in the computer industry claims unlimited anything, I know sure as hell it isn't infinite, or even unlimited in teh dictionary sense. Its you will be able to store a certain amount, and afterward? nope!

      So I can say that the word unlimited appears to have escaped the dictionary, and just become hype, and to all appearances is hype, but am still somehow wrong. Wow! That's ultra-mega ultimate amazing!

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  8. Re:actually, I'm OK with either... by 110010001000 · · Score: 2

    It is a pirate that terrorizes people. People being Corporations of course. Corporations are people too.

  9. Re:Worked out for me... by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What a bargain! Only $69.95 per year for 1TB? That is only 40% more than a 1TB hard drive costs. And you get to pay for it every year you say? What a great value!

  10. Re:In other news. by MightyYar · · Score: 2

    Well, clearly they should call that a laptop.

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  11. Re:Windows10 by cmiller173 · · Score: 2

    I got rid of it, by finally realizing that there isn't anything I do in Windows that I can't do in linux. All of the dev tools (java/android/git) I use are available on linux. capable office suites are available, I finally made the switch and now get no more nags from Microsoft. I also took the opportunity to upgrade the laptop with a SSD and my boot time from cold power off state is about 12 seconds!

  12. Hard drives are CHEAP, so are USB flash drives by kheldan · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Why are so many of you bothering with 'the cloud' when this sort of crap happens over and over and over again, ad nauseam? Are too many of you incapable of learning?

    Surely they won't hurt us again this time, let's try Cloud storage again!

    *Bangs head against wall repeatedly*

    People, you just don't get it. 'The Cloud' is a meme; it's a ruse; IT'S A TRAP. It's only two steps away from being Ransomware: 'Pay up or your data is TOAST'.

    External hard drives are cheap and reliable. So are huge USB flash drives, both in nice fast USB3. Buy two for your most sensitive data and make two copies, just in case. Really, honestly, seriously, how difficult is this?

    It's too big, too bulky, too confusing, why should I pay for anything?

    Get a microSD card and a tiny USB adapter. Fits nicely in your wallet or purse. USB HDD's are smaller than a pack of cigarettes. Even huge, normal USB flash drives are tiny now, and they're all cheap, cheap, cheap. Meanwhile 'cloud' providers keep playing shell games with your data, losing it, getting hacked, going out of business and telling you 'tough luck', and likely snooping into your data regardless of anything they tell you to the contrary. Come on, people, why do you keep punishing yourselves this way? Did you do something bad in a previous life or something?

    Please, please,, people: Stop with the 'cloud' nonsense already. You're just hurting yourselves.

    --
    Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
  13. Re:OneDrive? OneDrive? by slashdot_commentator · · Score: 2

    A USB stick doesn't do you any good when its left at home and you're away. It also doesn't do you any good when it burns along with your house in a fire.

    --
    There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
  14. My answer by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Offer unlimited storage, and when people upload 75TB worth of data it's abuse.

    How many TB isn't abuse again?

    Okay, here's my answer.

    It's Microsoft's blame-throwing that annoys me.

    If they came out and said "we can't support unlimited as planned, we have to switch to fixed limits", then everyone would understand. A well-meaning policy turned out to be unworkable, no biggie.

    Instead, they say "we do this because of user abuse", then they're putting the blame on the users, and shows contempt.

  15. Re:Worked out for me... by 110010001000 · · Score: 2

    I'm not sure what you were thinking. OneDrive doesn't qualify as a backup solution. It is cloud storage, not backup. You were probably thinking your $2500 Surface came with a "free" office suite too.

  16. Re:Abused? by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 2

    No, its that you are using a definition of unlimited that is not constrained by physics. Your definition is unlimited means infinite.

    "Unlimited" as a marketing term has nothing to do with physical, rational, nor societal constraints.

    It merely means that the purveyor will not impose artificial, arbitrary limits upon what each user can "use".

    Your level of naivety is either unlimited by your definition, or infinite, by mine.

    Do you remember the old Peanuts comic strip? Lucy would entice Charlie Brown into kicking a football, and every time pulling it way at the last second - he'd fall over. But he'd always fall for it.

    How many times do you Charlie Browns have to fall for the same "Unlimited" hype before you realize it doesn't matter one little tiny infinitesimal bit what you think it means?

    Unlimited cloud storage now means you can store stuff until they decide that they are done letting you store any more of your stuff. Now kick the football. Seriously, I won't pull it away from you, really, we've learned our lesson - come on, it'll be great - here ya go, it'll be a lot of fun. Kick it- you know you really want to. Pretty please?

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  17. Re:Abused? by macs4all · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Unlimited cloud storage now means you can store stuff until they decide that they are done letting you store any more of your stuff.

    So, you think that "Unlimited" means "Unlimited until we say you've reached our limit of Unlimited", right?

    So, "Unlimited" for certain values of "Unlimited"?

    I certainly agree that storing 75 TB of data in their "Unlimited" storage is supremely asshat-ish; but that doesn't mean that they violated (or even "abused") the limits of "Unlimited".

    Microsoft said one thing, and have been lying to so many people for so long, that they apparently never bothered to figure out that some people would actually take them at their "word".

    Pretty stupid for a corporation with enough lawyers on staff to form a small Army, and which feels fit to require EULAs for the most trivial of software packages that have more words in them than the AT&T Divestiture Decree.

  18. Re:Abused? by lgw · · Score: 2

    Obsessive pedantic nerds use language in a different way than normal people. English is not a programming language. Most normal people understand that "unlimited" means "but don't be a dick".

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.