
Microsoft’s cloud service SkyDrive is great, and no one has noticed - rfreytag
http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/23/microsofts-cloud-service-skydrive-is-great-and-no-one-has-noticed/
======
runjake
I've used it, it seemed great. There are a couple reasons I don't use it,
though:

1\. It's not Microsoft's bread and butter. History has shown when it's no
longer cost-effective, they'll drop it or neglect it in a heartbeat.

2\. Say it does become wildly successful and pushes out its major competition
(Dropbox & Drive), history has shown they'll _still_ neglect it until it bit
rots enough that a competitor can grab a foothold (eg. IE, Office, Hotmail,
etc etc etc).

Microsoft has awesome, awesome engineering people. They just need to change
their vision and their leadership.

~~~
eckyptang
I get the feeling you haven't used IE, hotmail and office for a while. They're
definitely _not_ rotting.

~~~
runjake
I use IE and Office daily. You didn't read my statement correctly:

"they'll still neglect it _until it bit rots enough that a competitor can grab
a foothold_ "

~~~
eckyptang
Fair point - I agree there.

------
eykanal
One thing I love about the hacker culture is that it functions like a
(somewhat dysfunctional) meritocracy. Software that is good will often gain
kudos, and bad software will be torn apart in critiques.

This fails when it comes to large companies as old biases and conspiracy
theories tend to kick in, but still, when Microsoft does something good,
eventually people will fess up and write good things about it. It's definitely
one of the nicer things about communities like this.

~~~
thurn
I liked SkyDrive, but its Windows bias is pretty apparent. It won't sync Unix
files that would be illegal on Windows (due to e.g. the filename) and the sync
algorithm is pretty bad on OSX (frequently running my CPU up to 100%). These
are some of the reasons why people distrust the Microsoft brand.

~~~
gameshot911
What's the connection between being unable to sync files with invalid
filenames (from MSFT's perspective) and trust?

~~~
possibilistic
Discounting Microsoft's long history, if there's this much platform
incongruity now, should we trust them to change that with time? If you were
forced to place a bet, which service provider would you stake it on?

I've nothing against Microsoft, but I think the grandparent poster has a
point.

------
drharris
I love Skydrive. It's the best of Dropbox combined with the best of Google
Docs (even better, you get to use Office), and it all works so seamlessly I
forget that I'm even using it. Maybe that's why nobody's talking about it,
because it's not causing us any pain. Not to mention, it's decently cheaper
than the other options and is well-integrated into all the devices I tend to
use. The only pain point I still have (and nobody has solved this) is that
both my wife and I have Live accounts, and we'd like to have a shared quota,
with some private folders. For now we just log into the same account until a
better solution is available.

I'm not using it to store racy pictures or my social security numbers, so I'm
not too concerned with privacy implications; there's no privacy to be had
online anyway. But given it integrates seamlessly with Office, OneNote, iOS
(mostly), Windows, Android, Xbox, and the web, I have nothing to complain
about. Like I said, it works so well I forget I'm even paying for it, which is
the best kind of service.

~~~
dpark
> _The only pain point I still have (and nobody has solved this) is that both
> my wife and I have Live accounts, and we'd like to have a shared quota, with
> some private folders. For now we just log into the same account until a
> better solution is available._

Can you clarify what your need is? If you share a folder (with edit
permissions) with your wife's Microsoft account, she can simply edit the
contents of the folder directly. I understand that doesn't give you a shared
quota, but I'm not clear why that's necessary. Presumably you're not worried
about your wife abusing your space, since you're currently just sharing the
account, and also since you married her. If you just need more space, the
expanded storage plans for SkyDrive are extremely cheap.

You could also create a group and use that to share with her. The group would
get its own separate quota. I frankly haven't used groups much because I don't
have a need for them, but I think they would be pretty much what you're asking
for. It won't sync locally, though, if that's something you need.

~~~
drharris
Local sync is of course the main need, and why we can't currently go the
sharing route. Without sync, Skydrive is largely useless. For now, logging
into the same account is ok. However, with Windows 8 tying into the live ID,
it would be better if we each had our own separate logins, but had "family
share" folders, for things like family documents and pictures. You can do that
now, but the folders wouldn't sync.

Nobody has solved the "family sync" problem yet. Give me separate accounts for
each member, but have a shared space that everyone accesses, with local sync,
and the ability to manage some sort of shared quota system (I don't want to
have to pay for 3 accounts x 50GB, would rather pay once for 100GB allocated
my own way). Especially when you tie such a system to Xbox live, you can start
to see how a family-based cloud approach would be a killer app.

~~~
dpark
Thanks. :) I'll pass along the feedback.

------
qq66
HN doesn't talk a lot about Microsoft Office, but it's by far the world's
dominant software application. American adults spend 35 billion hours in
Office every year, compared to 15 billion hours in Facebook, and 30 million
PowerPoint presentations are created every day. Any service that handles
document collaboration, such as Dropbox or Box, is dealing mostly with
Microsoft Office files in the enterprise.

Shameless plug here, since we tackle the same problem: People want to
collaborate in real-time, but they also want to use the standard Microsoft
Office applications that they already know how to use (well, maybe not the HN
crowd, but the corporate crowd). The way people use Office today is completely
broken, with filenames like "Marketing_v133_Tuesday_v4_Final_ReallyFinal.pptx"
being emailed back and forth in a Lynchian version control nightmare.

We're trying to go one step further with LiveLoop -- instead of bringing "save
and sync" functionality to the desktop applications like SkyDrive, we bring
true keystroke-by-keystroke real-time editing to Office. The first product we
support is PowerPoint and we just launched two weeks ago.

You can find us at <http://getliveloop.com> .

~~~
bornhuetter
I think a lot of developers ignore enterprise, and what I would call "the real
world", often to their detriment. There really is a lot of room for talented
developers in that area.

I think real-time collaboration within office documents would be very valuable
- but it has to be _really reliable_.

Word and Excel are probably the key apps in my mind, rather than Powerpoint -
I assume you plan these for later.

How hard to you think it will be to get this working well enough for a Big 4
to trust it?

~~~
qq66
LiveLoop, as it stands today, is really reliable in terms of data integrity --
we've been in alpha testing for months and have not lost a keystroke of data.
However, because of the challenges of building this product through the COM
API, we've had to make several design decisions which somewhat curtail the
user experience, namely 1) some actions require explicit syncing, but the list
of these actions shrinks every day, and 2) we need to momentarily steal focus
at times.

PowerPoint is definitely the most important application from a collaboration
perspective -- although Excel spreadsheets are important, they tend to be
owned by a fewer number of people, often just an individual. PowerPoints often
reflect consensus decisions, which require much more collaboration across
multiple organizational layers. We'll be doing Word and Excel of course, but
right now our focus is on PowerPoint.

I'm not sure what you mean by Big 4 (consulting?) but we are currently in a
pilot at a Fortune 100 company.

~~~
bornhuetter
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Four_(audit_firms)>

Trust me, there is a _lot_ of scope for collaboration on Word and Excel
documents in the enterprise. Excel is used a lot for tracking progress on
projects where a lot of people are involved. Most reports are in Word, and
people are often stuck trying to work on the same document at the same time a
day before it's due.

~~~
qq66
I don't disagree :) It's just that we had to start somewhere, and we decided
to start with PowerPoint. Part of that decision was also that Word and
PowerPoint have some architectural similarities so we wanted to start with one
of those two.

~~~
bornhuetter
Well, good luck to you. There's certainly a need in the area, and the
technology that you build should be applicable to a number of useful
applications.

------
majormajor
The ability to upload an Excel file, edit it on the web editor or the app on
my phone, and still have the original xlsx file with full fidelity available
through Skydrive is fantastic. I was never a fan of the Google Docs
integration on my old Evo running 2.3—it seemed terribly slow to load the docs
list and individual documents, even on wifi—but have been very happy with
Skydrive and its integration into WP and also Mac OS X and Windows.

------
eckyptang
I've been using SkyDrive for a couple of years. It's great. I use it to sync
my desktop, laptop and phone (lumia). The main powerful thing for me is
OneNote which just works transparently.

There is literally nothing out there as good. I've tried everything. Google
drive is Just crap - it doesn't leave real files on your disk and its buggy.
Dropbox is better but has no application support.

I think why no one has noticed is that a) the SkyDrive proponents as per much
of the userbase isn't that vocal and b) everyone is blind to Microsoft these
days.

As for the risk if account shutdown and them peeking at stuff, this is a risk
for any 'cloud provider'. If its a problem, keep a backup (which SkyDrive does
as it mirrors everything rather than providing links) and don't use it for
anything dodgy. I've had 9gb of mp3s up there for two years with no problems.

------
gm
I tried, it, really really liked it. LOVED the cheap prices for larger
capacities, and was about to give them my money to share stuff with other
people...

Until I discovered the hard way that files shared across accounts CANNOT be
synchronized to the local hard drive... It was a "What the fuck???" moment,
surely MS cannot roll out without this critical functionality... Yet, it's
correct, you can only sync to the local hard drive stuff that belongs to your
account. If it's shared from someone else's account then you can only see the
files online and need to download them if you need it locally.

Big fail, and a showstopper for me. Dropbox does this just fine, BTW. so I am
reluctant Dropbox user.

~~~
drharris
I actually spoke to a SkyDrive team member about this one. The root problem is
that once you have a truly shared folder, it takes up both people's quota (it
has to, otherwise you could link a lot of free accounts to get extra space).
The way it is implemented now makes it an explicit operation to move something
to your skydrive, so you know the quota implications up-front. That said, they
are trying to figure out a better solution for this.

Ironically (or not), this is the reason I quit Dropbox, because they do not
warn you that a shared folder will ruin your quota. Someone shared 50GB of
photos, it started syncing, maxed the quota, and resulted in some important
documents never making it to the cloud.

Neither is an ideal solution. Nobody's solved this problem yet.

Edit: The other reason was security; auto-sync is an excellent vector for
malware to enter the system. Get into one person's skydrive, infect their
shared folders, rinse and repeat.

~~~
gm
Very true, all your points. But the need is still there.

And I hear you about the quota problem. They should just make it take up the
quota of the person doing the sharing... Or am I missing something? But in the
meantime I am using Dropbox and I really, really did not want to become a
Dropboxer.

~~~
pjzedalis
You are missing something.

A person could conceivably create a ton of free accounts then fill them to the
free space limitations. Share it with their primary account and then they have
unlimited free space.

~~~
Dylan16807
Make it only work on paid accounts. Problem solved.

The current situation sucks.

~~~
pjzedalis
They've said only 2% of accounts are paid.

Sharing is a cornerstone of what DropBox is.

Restrict sharing to only the 2%?

~~~
Dylan16807
No, make sharing stop double-counting for the 2%.

------
DanielOcean
Um, perhaps because they're a little overly strict on what you can keep in
there.

This photographer got his account banned and deleted after they found 4
partial nudes:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2012/07/19/is-
microsof...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2012/07/19/is-microsoft-
spying-on-skydrive-users/)

Which apparently is against it's long list of prohibited uses listed here:

[http://wmpoweruser.com/watch-what-you-store-on-
skydriveyou-m...](http://wmpoweruser.com/watch-what-you-store-on-skydriveyou-
may-lose-your-microsoft-life/)

~~~
jasomill
Nice. In particular, given that every email ever "could be considered 'junk
mail'", Hotmail now forbids the transmission of email.

------
mandeepj
I am also using skydrive for few years now. All I can say that I am very
happy. I keep my active codebase folder synced with skydrive and I am worry
free from any loss. All my new code changes gets saved into cloud as soon as I
hit "Save".

Recently, MS released a skydrive explorer and drop-off folder which makes it
more good. It crashes one in a while but not a big deal. It is stuck with one
of my login.aspx.vb and never sync it. I don't know why.

It created multiple versions of my few .docx files with my machine name
appended but I think MS will fix it over time.

Does the success of skydrive means slow death for dropbox and box.net? I
seriously think dropbox should start some other business may be integration
with FB was the step in that direction but the feature is not outrageously
great.

------
devb0x
I opened my hotmail account in 98, it sure isnt going anywhere. Further I am
loving skydrive. It doesn't sync on my nix boxes but it backs up via a simple
drag drop. What's easier than that? I'm testing it now, but love the image
gallery and simple UI.

Nicely done.

------
ChuckMcM
The guy you can thank for the multi-edit-streams is Pavel Curtis. I got to sit
down and chat with him about the development of the calculus involved and all
I can say is the guy is a genius period.

------
lewisflude
Nice, been looking for a good Docs (Drive?) replacement for a while now!

------
zmmmmm
I enthusiastically tried to use SkyDrive a while back but two things stopped
me: no linux client and the Mac client required Lion (while my laptop is stuck
on snow leopard). For me, the whole entire point of cloud storage is that it
works seamlessly across all the platforms I use. If it doesn't do that it's
got little value compared to the solutions that go across all the platforms I
use.

------
uday_nandam
Skydrive is great! I use it on my Macbook, iPhone and Win8(desktop)! The
syncing is almost seamless now, works great through all ecosystems, and it is
much easier to organize your documents on the Web and on the OS! Unlike
GoogleDrive, which is a mess to deal with and try to organize your documents!
The sharing options are also much better with Skydrive!

------
rbanffy
Requires much hassle to use on Linux and a case-insensitive filesystem on a
Mac.

Why bother?

~~~
majormajor
Did you actually set up your system to use case-sensitive HFS+? What does it
do that the default doesn't?

~~~
rbanffy
I set it up on a separate partition.

Quite frankly, I can only imagine the horrendous bug nest that would require
what amounts to little more than a file syncing application to demand a case-
insensitive filesystem. Do they really store the files on NTFS volumes
somewhere?

~~~
majormajor
It _is_ a bizarre requirement, especially since Skydrive does preserve case.

I'd just never run into anyone with case-sensitive HFS before.

~~~
jsight
I'm not sure that it's completely bizarre. Dropbox will work on case-sensitive
file systems, but it does very strange things if two files exist with the same
name, but different case.

I suspect MS just didn't want to deal with this complexity for what was
(perceived) to be an issue for a relatively small number of people.

To be clear, I don't necessarily agree with their reasoning, but I do see
where it could have come from.

~~~
rbanffy
> I suspect MS just didn't want to deal with this complexity

Case-sensitive filesystems are probably much simpler than case-insensitive
ones that have to preserve case when a file is saved or renamed but ignore it
when the file is opened.

------
6ren
I've been looking for a rich text editor for linux - I got sick of
OpenOffice's load times (47sec) and seeing Oracle's logo.

It was inconceivable to me that MS has a webapp version of Word.
Unfortunately, it takes 27sec to load a document (in chrome, slower in
firefox).

Abiword takes only 7sec (though the rendering is bit buggy sometimes, and it
doesn't selects words when you x2 click).

~~~
eckyptang
Odd it loads in 2 seconds for me even on ie9.

------
tharris0101
Sounds cool but -and I know I'm biased- I won't let anything pull me back into
an Office world.

------
fiendsan
i wouldnt say its great, its on the middle of the pack, there are things that
still drag it down, there is a limit on the size of each file and number of
files you can sync, also the software runs pretty slow and syncs pretty slow,
its pretty stable on windows 7 but it kinda freaks out a lot on OSX and
finally they actively scan the contents of your files in the cloud, and that
is kinda were i draw the line, one thing is fully encripted drive, another is
what dropbox does a sort of mix of security and ease, but microsoft goes out
of its way to go through your files, thats a big brother nono, on the flip
side, they do have realy cheap storage (i think google drive storage is
ridiculous, especially comparing with dropbox) and their office/picture
application support is probably the best, so i wouldnt say skydrive is all
that great, its just ok.

------
hamxiaoz
One more thing: Skydrive is not blocked by GFW. On the other hand, both Google
and Dropbox are blocked.

~~~
hollerith
GFW == Great Firewall of China, probably.

------
valdiorn
Oh, I noticed, allright! And here's why you SHOULD NOT use it!

[http://wmpoweruser.com/watch-what-you-store-on-
skydriveyou-m...](http://wmpoweruser.com/watch-what-you-store-on-skydriveyou-
may-lose-your-microsoft-life/)

------
akandiah
While I would like to try it, I'm put off by Microsoft's snooping of data:
<http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4265086>

------
rthomas6
" * Windows Phone

* iPhone and iPad

* Other Phones"

Heh.

------
SpikeDad
Yea, that's it. It's OUR fault (the technology users) that Microsoft is
failing with SkyDrive. If only we abandoned all the other services that do us
well and switch to something we don't a)know about and b)don't give a shit
about then everything for MS will be fine.

Who are these people writing this crap?

------
Buzaga
also, they'll be peeking at your private stuff and banning you for it

[http://wmpoweruser.com/watch-what-you-store-on-
skydriveyou-m...](http://wmpoweruser.com/watch-what-you-store-on-skydriveyou-
may-lose-your-microsoft-life/)

~~~
JimmaDaRustla
Don't be a law breaking jagaloon and you should be fine.

Edit: My take: just because a folder is private doesn't mean you couldn't
suddenly make it "public", making Microsoft the proud host of illicit
pornography. I say illicit because I'm sure there are, depending on the state,
laws to abide by which you must have a "18+" warning/prompt in order to access
it.

Edit 2: And, if you really don't want to MSFT to see your files, but still
want to use their free service, use a TrueCrypt drive. You will lose the
features things like opening documents on devices, etc, but you get the
additional protection.

~~~
rbanffy
> Don't be a law breaking jagaloon and you should be fine.

Yeah. That makes it perfectly fine for them to peek into your files, watch
your home movies...

~~~
cooldeal
Hyperbole much? They seem to be using a automated scanning program to flag
content. Didn't Google do something similar that became a big issue on HN?

~~~
rbanffy
> They seem to be using a automated scanning program to flag content.

And when the content gets flagged, what do you think happens next? Don't you
think that, at some level, there will be a human involved?

~~~
Dylan16807
Yes, it's not the flagging that bothers me. An inability to upload certain
files the computer doesn't like is annoying at best. But the chance that they
will go around humanly inspecting my files based on that? Dealbreaker.

