Microsoft's cloud storage service, SkyDrive, has been around for just over 5 years—since way before Apple came out with iCloud or Google with Gdrive. But only with Windows 8 does SkyDrive become an integral part of Microsoft's operating system strategy. Not only will the built-in modern-style Windows 8 apps like Mail and Photos be able to use your SkyDrive, but third-party apps, too, will be able to save items to your SkyDrive cloud storage folders. And since Microsoft has taken to using the term "device cloud" to describe SkyDrive, you can bet there's going to be an important mobile component to the service.
And in some cases you'll get the benefit of "single sign-in"—some other apps and sites will be able to use your Microsoft account credentials, saving you from repeatedly entering a username and password. Third-party apps can also use SkyDrive to roam their settings and state. This is all handled with privacy and security in mind though; you have to okay the services you want to access this identity check. The Windows 8 team has detailed the privacy/security precautions as follows:
First, we will require a strong password (and you can't leave password blank). Next, we'll collect a secondary proof of your identity. This will allow us to establish "trust" with specific PCs that you use frequently or own. This in turn will also enable more secure syncing of private data like passwords.
You're also asked to grant your consent for the program to access your SkyDrive data by the app or site wanting to use it. Note the two-factor authentication required—something that came up recently when an Apple-Gmail-Amazon-using journalist was hacked to the hilt.
Your SkyDrive Account
Everyone gets a SkyDrive account. Well, everyone who's created a Microsoft account, which includes everyone who's signed up for a Hotmail or Outlook.com account. What do you get with that account? All users get 7GB free, and, if you're a longtime SkyDrive account holder, you get 25GB free. This compares with 5GB free for iCloud and Google Drive, and 2GB for Dropbox. You can add 20GB for $10 a year, and 100GB for $50, this compares with $60 for 100GB on Google Drive, and $100 for just 50GB on iCloud.
You also get access to your online storage via more devices than any of those alternatives: SkyDrive includes apps for not only Windows 7 and 8, but for Mac OS X, iOS, Android, and Web access. The last is particularly important, and one thing that's long disappointed me about Apple's iCloud—why can't I access photos in my iCloud Photo Stream from a Web browser, if the stuff is actually in the "cloud."
Syncing
It's important to note that, like those other services, SkyDrive is not just online storage, but also file and folder syncing. In the past, Microsoft had separated its syncing service with names like Live Mesh and Live Sync, and (way back) FolderShare. The clients available for SkyDrive allow you to place a photo, document, or other item in your cloud storage and have it magically available to any of your other SkyDrive clients on any of your other devices or computers. I for one, find this joining of online storage and syncing a refreshing simplification of a previously somewhat confusing set of systems.
Some have complained that the new use of SkyDrive as the OS's syncing component doesn't offer the peer-to-peer syncing available in the previous service, but the end result of synced files and folders is identical. SkyDrive syncing on computers also differs from Mesh in that you can't designate any old folder you want to be synced, only those under the SkyDrive main folder. But Microsoft has made it possible for these synced folders to look less sequestered in the SkyDrive world, by using Windows' Libraries. A relevant blog post reads"If you'd like your SkyDrive folders to feel less like separate folders, you can add your SkyDrive Documents and Pictures folders to your Documents and Pictures Libraries in Windows 8 and Windows 7."
The Windows 8 SkyDrive App
Windows 8 ships with a SkyDrive app that you can recognize by the cloud on its blue Start page tile. Clicking on this takes you into another grid of tiles, each representing a folder or file you've stored on the service. Folders containing image files with sport an image on their tile above the folder name, and with a right-click (or swipe in from the top or bottom edge on a touch screen) you can choose to view Details, which adds the item's date and size, or stick with the thumbnail view.
The same applies if you're inside a folder. For example, if you're in an image folder, you'll by default just see large thumbnails of the images. Hovering the cursor over a tile/thumbnail displays the filename, date last modified, file size, and who it's shared with. When you invoke the app bar from the main screen (by right-clicking or swiping up from the bottom of a touchscreen), you'll see just five buttons—Refresh, New Folder, Upload, Details, and Select all. This changes when you right click on a file tile, adding four new buttons on the left—Clear selection, Download, Delete, and Open with.
Even more cloudy is the ability to view Office documents stored on your SkyDrive storage in Office Web apps. In fact, there's a strong tie-in between Office Web apps and SkyDrive, since the latter is the default place your Web Office documents reside. I had not problem viewing not only Microsoft file formats like Word Documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations using the online Office apps, but I could also view PDFs and Windows 8 knew to open a ZIP file on the desktop, showing the archive's contents in a folder.
One SkyDrive disappointment for me was that I didn't see any evidence of it in the Windows 8 desktop. I expected to see a SkyDrive choice in Windows Explorer, just as I did after installing the SkyDrive utility in Windows 7. I did see a HomeGroup section in Explorer that sported my user picture, but that's a different story from my SkyDrive cloud storage. It turns out that you have to install the same desktop client in Windows 8 desktop that you would in Windows 7, which we'll cover next. Since it's identical whether you run it in Windows Vista, 7, or 8 desktop, one section will suffice. Me, I think it's a little odd that you'd have to install this in Windows 8, since the functionality is already on the machine in the Metro (sorry) mode and you've already signed into your account.
SkyDrive on Windows 7
Yes, this article is supposed to be about Windows 8, but the Windows 7 SkyDrive software you run in that incumbent Windows OS is the same as what you need to run in Windows 8's desktop mode, if you want to see SkyDrive integration there. This app is what makes the folder and file syncing possible, taking the place of Windows Live Mesh, but of course it also serves as simple online storage. Note that it only works on Windows Vista and later—no XP users need apply.
To get started, you download and run the tiny 5MB SkyDrive client from Microsoft[http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/skydrive/download-skydrive]. After an introductory message box on which you click Get Started, you simply sign into your Microsoft account. The setup wizard for this lets you create an account, too, if you don't already have one, and then shows how your SkyDrive folder will appear in Windows Explorer, with its little blue cloud icon instead of the traditional yellow folder icon. You can change its location from the default top level under your user folder.
After you've accepted a SkyDrive folder location, the wizard informs you about the incredibly important, cool, and potentially tail-saving Fetch feature. This lets you access files from the PC even if you didn't put them in the SkyDrive folder. A checkbox here lets you turn off this feature if you're afraid of unauthorized access to all files on your PC.
And that's it! You'll next see a tooltip at the system tray showing you the newly installed cloud icon, and your actual SkyDrive Explorer folder will open. For a quick test, I went over to my Windows 8 PC, and created a new folder it the SkyDrive app, which appeared seconds later in the Windows 7 machine's SkyDrive folder. Including SkyDrive in Windows Explorer is incredibly helpful—it means you can save work from any application to your cloud storage directly, without having to go to a website.
Next I shared some of the screenshots used for this article to my SkyDrive account. (One disappointment for me in this process was that I couldn't create a new folder through the Picture app's Share feature. I could only do so in the SkyDrive app itself.) I chose a target folder, and clicked Upload. I was impressed with how quickly all the images appeared on the Windows 7 PC—no more emailing screenshots to myself!
As a visual cue, when files and folders are up-to-date, their Explorer entries show a green check mark, but while updating, this is replaced by circular refresh arrows. Finally, I was amazed how easy it is to uninstall the SkyDrive client, in case you don't want its cloud folders and syncing. Just head to the Control Panel's Programs and Features page to remove it.
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