Found an email from OneDrive in your inbox this morning? Us too. Welcome to Microsoft SkyDrive reborn.
Following official word last month of Microsoft’s plans to rebrand its cloud storage service, today we see the launch of OneDrive. For the most part it would appear pretty much unchanged from its previous life under the SkyDrive name, but the team behind it are promising a bigger, better experience than ever before.
Key improvements off the bat include more advanced video sharing capabilities and a suite of improved apps on Windows Phone, iOS, Android and Xbox. In addition, Microsoft is dolling out an extra 100GB of SkyDrive OneDrive storage for one year to 100,000 of its users, free of charge.
The underpinnings for SkyDrive/OneDrive have already been integrated into Microsoft’s most prominent products (Windows Phone and Windows 8.1), but the web experience is also being reworked, “We’re building it right into all of the latest Microsoft devices and services,” said Chris Jones, Corporate VP of OS Services at Microsoft.
“From Xbox to Windows Phone to Windows 8.1 to Office – but we’re also making sure it’s available on the web and across all other platforms including iOS and Android, so your photos, videos and files are kept safe and are available anytime you need them.”
Presently users have access to the 7GB of free OneDrive storage by default, but plugging in the auto-upload option for photos will grant you an additional 3GB. Existing users can also send invitations to their friends to use OneDrive, with every successful new user adding an extra 500MB to the sender’s storage capacity, up to a maximum 5GB extra. Like practically ever other cloud storage service out there, OneDrive also features paid tiers for more capacity, ranging from 50GB up to an extra 200GB for an annual fee.
So what do you think of the new name? Does OneDrive offer enough to serve as your cloud storage service of choice, or do you prefer an alternative? Let us know in the comments.
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