SkyDrive lands on desktop, but free storage is slashed

SkyDriveSetup.exe

This reports that it is not a valid Win32 application !

By chazzd on 23 Apr 2012

I get 'not a valid Win32 Application' on Server 2003 (it is probably the same on XP), but it installs fine on Win 7 x64. Given you now get the file replication capability previously offered in Live Mesh and similar to Dropbox, both of which are 5GB or less for free, the current storage offer seems fine. I am not sure many would have used the 25GB of Skydrive before with the web-only upload.

By davemarchant1 on 23 Apr 2012

Not that impressed

I've been using Gladinet Cloud Desktop to map skydrive to a network share. I've then used this for backing up photos with an automated script and it works pretty well. So far I've used 11GB of storage.

The new desktop client from MS is not great in that it insists on creating a new folder named skydrive on my local machine and syncing that with the root of my skydrive folder in the "cloud". Currently all my photo backups are in a seperate sub directory and there's no way to map the local folder to the skydrive folder.

Reading the blog this approach was not taken as it would result in to many unresolved complexities. Don't see the problem myself simply a case of mapping x to y. Certianly gladinet and my script seem to manage it ok!

By jeffl69 on 23 Apr 2012

SkyDrive Explorer

Don't forget in the bad old days there was a third party application to provide access to SkyDrive. It wasn't great but it worked and did allow users to make use of the space, although it did suffer from the 50MB file size limit at the time.

By tirons1 on 23 Apr 2012

Agree with jeffl69

It's a pain to have to have a root folder. I'm guessing the real reason was to stop people from simply sharing their c:\users\name folder. That would cause all kinds of problems if it was shared between machines.

I wonder if you can use symbolic links to stuff real folders into that SkyDrive folder? Might work.

Oh, and has anyone sussed how to change the local of the SkyDrive folder once the client is installed?

By PaulOckenden on 24 Apr 2012

What about Live Mesh?

Is this going to eventually replace Live Mesh, which allows you sync multiple folders in any location?

By The_Scrote on 24 Apr 2012

Live Mesh?

How does this affect or improve upon Live Mesh, which allows you to sync any folder between PCs?

By The_Scrote on 24 Apr 2012

It works

I can confirm that mklink /j (run from an elevated command prompt) allows you to add a junction to any other folder into your SkyDrive folder, and it syncs just fine. So it's easy to add your desktop, documents, downloads, etc. and share them between machines.

By PaulOckenden on 24 Apr 2012

No Win XP Support though

MS have confirmed that the Windows App does not support XP.

Poor show.

"We are aware of a desire for XP support and are considering it for future release"

By chazzd on 24 Apr 2012

@chazzd

Why should they support an 11 year old OS that no-one should be using any more? Within a few months it will have been replaced by 3 subsequent version of Windows. Move on!

By The_Scrote on 24 Apr 2012

Cloud only?

Is there a way to use the new service to keep files only online, without syncing everything back down to each computer on which the client is installed?

By The_Scrote on 24 Apr 2012

Thank you!

... for the heads-up Nicole, I've now upgraded to a free 25Gb Cloud storage which is rather splendid.

Unlike Google, MS do NOT lay claim or copyright to your data which I think is to be commended. Will have a play with this and see how I get on.

Thanks again! :^)

By mrmmm on 25 Apr 2012

XP

"an 11 year old OS that no-one should be using any more?"
Is it illegal?
Is it immoral?
Is it fattening?
Does it add to global warning?

By AdrianB on 25 Apr 2012

@AdrianB

Is it illegal? Should be.
Is it immoral? Might as well be.
Is it fattening? Yes - that's the number 1 reason Americans are the fattest people!
Does it add to global warning? Do you mean global warMing, or warNing? And don't you know it's called climate change now???

But in seriousness, it is time XP is phased out. How many manufacturers still support their product a decade after it was released? If manufacturers still keep supporting XP, then people will have less incentive to upgrade.

And MS shouldn't have made a 32bit version of Windows 7, only 64 bit. It would have helped accelerating adoption of 64 bit computing.

Not the best argument I know.

But I use Windows 7 Ultimate every day, and at first, I thought it was marginally improved over XP but now I have been using it every day for 6 months, I feel it is superbly better then XP. MS have done some idiotic things in 7, and implemented things half-arsed, and needs some refinement for it to fully beat XP in every way.

I also used Vista for a couple of years, before going on to 7, and found that Vista was definitely a big improvement over XP, overall.

The big thing I noticed between Vista and 7 is that 7 is far more responsive, and quicker at doing every day things, and shutting down, booting up, hibernation, etc.

By rjd83 on 26 Apr 2012

@AdrianB

Is it obviously none of those things, but it IS hideously out of date and there is no reason why any developer should support it any more. If you want support for XP, why not 98, 95 or even 3.5? If you want to use a very old OS you have to accept that it will not run all the latest software (and MS are not the only ones to ignore ancient OSs).

By The_Scrote on 26 Apr 2012