Mac users got the integration of iCloud a while back now, and it’s slowly working its way into more applications as a seamless background transfer and replication tool. That being said, if you use something like 1Password for synching passwords to non-Apple platforms or use Open Office across platforms, you probably still need another “cloud” storage service.
Let’s step back and remember that cloud storage is (essentially) a virtual USB stick that you login over the internet to access, giving you your files wherever you are. ReadWrite did this great analysis of the big cloud drive providers and came up with a simple answer: Dropbox performs the best out of the current crop of providers. I use Dropbox myself, mostly to synch between desktop and laptop Macs, but also to synch inside my virtual machines (I write Windows code on Macs).
Signup for Dropbox here and you and I both get rewarded with extra (free) space. Free accounts get a base 2GB of storage and you can get up to 16GB more through referrals (500MB per person). Additional pay plans exist and are covered on the Dropbox website.
Installing is easy -- Dropbox uses a dedicated folder on your machine that automatically synchs when you are connected to the internet, but you can limit which files and folders inside of that dedicated folder you want synched too. For example, I synch my Windows LiveCode projects to all my Windows virtual machines, but not to any of my Macs.
Do you think Apple should provide iCloud access to Windows machines?
No comments:
Post a Comment