Microsoft SkyDrive is a cloud based file hosting service which allows users to upload and sync their files to an online cloud storage drive. The service was previously known as Windows Live SkyDrive and part of Microsoft's Windows Live services. The files on the account are managed with a Microsoft account and users can keep files private, share them with their contacts or make them public.
Users who signed up for SkyDrive prior to April 22, 2012 has the opportunity to hold onto 25GB of free storage, making SkyDrive one of the largest free storage options available. However the service is now limited to 7GB of free storage to new users. SkyDrive can be accessed through the web browser at SkyDrive.com and is available on multiple platforms and can be downloaded using the following links
SkyDrive will come deeply integrated into Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 and give users a seamless connection to the cloud on these platforms.
SkyDrive is built using HTML5 technologies and allows users to upload up to 300MB at a time by dragging and dropping the file to the web page. If you are using the desktop application for Windows or Mac OS you can upload 2GB at a time.
SkyDrive includes support for Office Web Apps and allows users to upload, create, edit and share Microsoft Office documents directly within their web browsers. SkyDrive can be used to create, view or edit Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote documents from within a web browser. Microsoft Office Web Apps allows multiple users to simultaneously co-author documents on the SkyDrive which even maintains the version history of the edits.
SkyDrive has been deeply integrated into the latest versions of Microsoft Office, allowing users to edit documents on their SkyDrives using the desktop version of the Office Suite.Changes are synchronized with the online versions and conflicts can be easily resolved. Multiple users can view and edit a document on the SkyDrive using either the online or desktop versions of Office, making SkyDrive a truly collaborative real-time editing suite.
Shared documents on the SkyDrive can be embedded into other webpages. Visitors to these webpages can then interact with these documents, such as browsing an embedded PowerPoint presentation.
SkyDrive is integrated with social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and allows users to quickly share their files with their contacts on these social networks. You can maintain an access control of all the files you have shared on these social networks. SkyDrive supports multiple file formats including PDF and ODF which is an XML based format supported in a number of word processing apps including Microsoft Office, OpenOffice and WordPerfect. With 7GB being the base storage on SkyDrive users, they can opt to upgrade to larger tiers of storage.
- 20GB – $10 / year
- 50GB – $25 / year
- 100GB – $50 / year