The Cloud Wars

A couple of years ago I reviewed some online backup solutions. The main contenders were Dropbox, iDisk and DriveHQ. Fast forward two years and Google Drive, Apple iCloud, Microsoft Skydrive, Box and Dropbox are battling to provide your online storage.

I have used all 5 services (free accounts) and have detailed the unique features, pricing and sharing capabilities of each here in helping you decide which product would be best for you. In most cases a combination of two or more services is the best option.

Google Drive

This year Google launched their long awaited cloud storage service, Drive. Their online office suite Google Docs is now part of Google Drive and with desktop clients available for Windows, Mac and Linux (soon) it has become a serious player in the cloud storage game. An Android app is also available with an iOS app coming soon.

Google Drive offers users 5GB of online space for free. Currently it is priced at $2.49/month for 25GB, $4.99/month for 100GB … and all the way up to 16TB for $799.99/month. I wonder how many accounts have 16TB :O

Sharing documents and folders is easy with Drive. Simply select the document and click the share button to allow access to another with an email address. You can even see changes as they happen if two or more people are working on the same document. Collaborators can add comments and there is version tracking so you can go back up to 30 days if you need to see a prior revision.

I rate Google Drive as a solid and flexible solution for cloud storage and online document editing. It is not limited to traditional document file types and provides real time changes to be seen by people working on the same document.

Microsoft Skydrive

Skydrive has been around since 2007 (known then as Windows Live Folders). In 2011 it was overhauled to be HTML5 compatible and now allows users to create word, powerpoint and excel documents from within a browser. It can also be synchronized with the 2010 Office software, allowing users to change a document at the same time.

Skydrive offers users 7GB of online space for free. If you had an account prior to April 20th 2012 you were offered a free upgrade to 25GB. If 5GB is not enough the pricing as it stands now for Skydrive is 20GB for $10/year, 50GB for $25/year and 100GB for $50/year.

There is currently an iOS and a Windows Phone app but no official Android app. Desktop programs are available for Windows and Mac operating systems. Sharing is can be done from the web browser and across social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Apple iCloud

iCloud consists of a few more features than file syncing. In addition, you will have access to Photo Stream, iTunes in the Cloud, Calendar, Contacts and Email and Find My iPhone/Friends.

This article will mainly focus on the file sharing side – Documents in the Cloud. Once you have Pages, Numbers or Keynote on your iOS 5.0 device or Mac you will be able to save your iWork, MS Office, and PDF documents to iCloud. As far as I know these are the only types of documents that can be saved to iCloud and this I feel puts Documents in the Cloud at a massive disadvantage compared to the competition. Sharing is limited to sending via email.

Every account comes with 5GB worth of storage for free. If you need more online storage from Apple it will cost (at time of writing) $20/year for 10GB, $40/year for 20GB and $100/year for 50GB. It is a lot pricier than the rest however the extra storage may be useful for backing up an entire mobile device or for storing photos in Photo Stream.

iCloud desktop programs are available for OS X 10.7 + and Windows Vista +. Personally I don’t like the fact Apple has now forced users to upgrade from Snow Leopard if they want to use iCloud on their Mac desktop.

Box

Box is another solution, which behaves much like DropBox. I signed up for Box a while back when I came across an article saying they were giving away 50GB free storage if you downloaded their app for iOS. Their free account now will provide you with 5GB of online storage.

One thing you cannot do with a free account is download multiple files. This was enough for me to stop using Box. Looking past that, Box can integrate with Microsoft 2010’s Office Suite, Google Apps, and a few other CRM software packages out there. It also has an app for Android and iOS and programs for Windows and Mac (Premium account required).

A lot of Box’s functionality is reserved for premium accounts. Currently a premium account costs $15/user/month and that will get you 1000GB of web storage and access to those documents offline on a computer.

Dropbox

Last but not least I am going to mention Dropbox again. Like two years ago I thought the way Dropbox seamlessly integrates with any computer or mobile device is perfect. Sharing a document or folder could not be easier and now you can even right click a file and get a public link to share it with another person.

I find being able to share files via Dropbox the easiest way to get them from my mobile to a computer and vice versa. The free account will give you 2GB of storage but referring friends and allowing automatic camera uploads can increase this up to 16GB. Paid accounts can get you 50GB for $9.99/month and 100GB for $19.99/month with referrals getting you 1GB per referral (500mb for free account).

I currently use all these services except Box and iCloud. I think for a business Box would be a good solution, however since there is no standalone desktop program and there are limitations on multiple file downloads for free accounts I have steered clear.

Out of all the services mentioned I think Dropbox is still the best despite not having as much free storage as Drive or Skydrive. By inviting a few friends you both can receive boosts to the data storage and I find their file synchronization flawless across all devices and computers I have used it on. I would use this in combination with Google Drive for times when collaboration on a document is needed.

My Tech on iPad

Is the iPad’s 15 minutes of fame almost up? In the last few weeks the only gadget on everyone’s mind has been the iPhone 4. Nonetheless the iPad isn’t that bad…but it’s missing so much that could have really made it a lot better. No doubt all part of Apple’s game plan for future generations.

When the iPad was released earlier this year I was in no rush to buy. No front or back camera, low RAM and no flash support, and this product was meant to “revolutionise” mobile computing :S. A couple of associates had imported from the US, so we were able to have a peek before it was officially released here in Australia. First thing I noticed was how easily the screen smudges. The good news is that when the screen is on you can hardly notice the greasy marks. My first impression was this is just an iPhone on steroids. Many others obviously disagreed as they were prepared to wait in queues hours long to be first to get one. Since then there has been very limited stock, especially of the 3G version.

Fast forward a couple of months and iPads have been trickling in here in Oz. I received one as a gift recently and after using it for a while I must say my opinion has changed. This thing actually has a lot of potential! I can tell because after loading up some frequently used apps, bookmarking my favourite sites and setting up my email accounts I’ve hardly used my laptop since.

I doubt I would ever read a physical book again thanks to iBooks. Save any PDF document from Safari and it’s there in iBooks ready for offline reading. Perfect for a plane or train trip. There is a variety of books in the app store, but also check out the Kindle app for an even larger selection of titles (and generally cheaper) from Amazon.com.

The iPad's screen is amazing for reading digital books

Unfortunately compared to the large amount of iPhone apps in the App Store, only a small percentage of them are iPad optimised. I’m hoping this is because the iPad is fairly new and developers are still hard at work porting their mobile apps. All iPhone/iTouch apps can run on the iPad, however most I’ve tried look horrible magnified 2x. There are exceptions such as Bejeweled, Trees of Doom and Fruit Ninja (which also has a HD version). Here is a list of iPad apps which I have installed and use often:

Team Viewer HD – Easily gain secure access to your own or a friends PC for remote help; this is the best remote desktop client app I have ever used. Free for personal use and works great with Windows and OSX.

Bloomberg – Excellent finance and share watcher. Looks amazing on the iPad plus it’s free. Watching your stocks drop in high res sort of makes up for the loss….well almost.

Dropbox – I’ve discussed Dropbox previously and it’s only natural an iPad version exists. One of the best free cloud storage solutions.

IMDB – Read up on and rate movies and television series’ using the Internet Movie Database App.

WordPress – Fantastic free app for admins whose sites use WordPress. Easily connect to write new posts or edit existing ones.

Feeddler RSS – Awesome free RSS reader that syncs with Google Reader.

Evernote – Synchronises notes across multiple platforms. I’ve stopped using the built in notes as Evernote is all that plus more.

Jumbo Calculator – Why Apple thought the iPad didn’t need a calculator I don’t know. It could be useful. Jumbo is free anyway so if you need a big ass calculator check it out.

Surprisingly a Facebook for iPad app does not exist. If you don’t want to use the iPhone version check out touch.facebook.com. This site is presented very nicely on the iPad but there is no FB Chat.

If you come across any iPad games or applications you would like to recommend please use the comment section below.

Currently running on special version of iOS 3, the iPad doesn’t yet support multitasking (unless you jailbreak). This is set to change later in the year when a new software version is released. It is definitely much needed! Some other minor OS improvements I believe would make the iPad better include being able to attach more than one file to an email and having way to connect to a printer from the Email and Safari apps.