Microsoft announces paid storage and other applications for their clouding service SkyDrive

Microsoft Corporation has announced to add paid storage to its clouding service called SkyDrive in addition to a number of other services.

The company started its clouding service in 2007 but commenced the official Wave 5 (Build 16.2.2907.1020) in November last year. It had been rumoured for a couple of months that the company was planning to introduce paid storage.

Now that official announcement is in everybody’s grasp, the tariff is as following:

• New users will get 5GB of free storage
• Existing users, as of April 22, will be offered up to 25 GB of storage for free, should they choose so
• 20 GB addition storage will be charged at $10 per year
• 50 GB addition storage will be charged at $25 per year
• 100 GB addition storage will be charged at $50 per annum

Moreover, the company also released the desktop client of the SkyDrive on Windows platform. According to the company, the application will be able to handle the SkyDrive service from the desktop, in addition to the web browser-based operation.

The users will be able to manage files and folders in applications as they do on the operating system. Following is the list of features the desktop client, downloadable from Microsoft’s website, offers to Windows users:

• Ability to access SkyDrive directly from Windows Explorer — photos, documents, and other files
• Option to add new files to SkyDrive by dragging them to the SkyDrive folder
• Ability to organize files and folders in SkyDrive, just like any other folder
• Option to connect back to the PC if the user forgets to put something in SkyDrive

Microsoft has been thriving to build SkyDrive as a full-fledged service just like iCloud. However, the competition is beefing up as Google is rumoured to be on the verge of releasing its own clouding service called GDrive. Google has already aired the Google Play which presumably integrate with the clouding service as well.

Microsoft also announced that SkyDrive app for Mac OS X Lion is also available on the web. Moreover, the iOS apps for iPhone and iPad have been updated to support Retina Display and couple of other features.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=20104

Posted by Usman Khalid on Apr 24 2012. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.