June 27th, 2007
Windows Live Folders
By Jimmy Daniels
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
Windows Live Folders, formerly referred to as Live Drive, a much better name, IMHO, has entered beta, or rather, a managed beta, whatever that means. The service is supposed to start with 500Mb of online storage on a new computing infrastructure that Microsoft has been building for Silverlight.
The beta system is pretty straight forward. Users can upload files via a web form or through an ActiveX control. Once on the system, files can be marked public, private, or be shared with other Live users by user name or through email by permalink. Files will be download only since Microsoft doesn’t have an office web suite yet. They will also be continually adding greater integration between Spaces and Folders so that files uploaded to one show up on the other.
The Folders beta is mainly meant to get user feedback to be used in future iterations. Microsoft already has plans to incorporate file syncing into the storage cloud powered by FolderShare, which they acquired back in 2005, stepping on the toes of quite a few startups along the way. Source: TechCrunch
We Say: I asked what a managed beta was because I just went to folders.live.com, it gave me a login prompt already filled in with my id, so I entered my password and now I have 500MB of free online storage. I grabbed some programs I had downloaded from the net, no, they are evaluation or free programs, totaled about 14 or 15 megs and uploaded very quickly, in under a minute. Note, I am currently on a very fast connection, it will be interesting to see how fast it is from home and with lots of people using it. So, if you are looking for free storage online and have a live id, sign in and start uploading and lets test this thing out. Beta, schmeta.
One suggestion is to allow more file uploads at once, five is kind of low, at least go to ten, or allow us to drag and drop files and folders like we can with Internet Explorer and ftp sites.
Another Mike says:
I just signed up myself and I gotta say it’s nice, even if it just came to beta. I won’t be able to effectively use it right now until they decide to allow you to upload things in groups. I don’t want to select things one at a time. It would just take far too long.
I assume though that this is just the web front end for something far more connected. Another app (Like Windows Mail) or integration with Windows Explorer(like what i-Drive used to be). And when that happens I’ll be more than happy to use it.
June 27th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
John Corliss says:
Yep, that’s it. Give in to Microsoft’s agenda to get us all using web services and renting software from them. Sooner or later, people who don’t see the greater implications of what Microsoft is doing will have us all using dumb clients and paying additional fees for the “privilege” of computing.
I’ll pass.
June 28th, 2007 at 1:44 am
Michael says:
No Dice… Signed in with my Live ID and get a message that the Beta was closed to new users.
June 28th, 2007 at 8:12 am
Rich says:
Same as Michael above (beta is closed to new users).
June 29th, 2007 at 10:34 am