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Pros
Best in class for collaborative office suites. Includes local file-syncing and offline access to documents. Built-in OCR technology. Generous free storage space if you use Google file formats for most docs.
- Cons Some users may feel uneasy about privacy. Hit and miss success with various video file formats.
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Bottom LinePart office suite and part file-syncing service, Google Drive retains all the best features and core functionality of its predecessor, Google Docs, while upping the ante on just how much it enables collaboration. It's one sweet package.
What started as a free online alternative to
Microsoft Office has quickly become one of the most impressive services
for creating, editing, saving, syncing, and collaborating on documents.
Google Drive (freemium) has long impressed me in just how far it goes
toward helping groups of people work together on files simultaneously.
Some new features rolling out in a recent update add even more support
for teamwork.
It hasn't been long since Google Docs rebranded itself as Google Drive,
so allow me to briefly recap: Google Docs took on the new name after it
added local file syncing to its service. In other words, Google
Docs—ahem, Drive—now works more like Dropbox , SugarSync,
or any other file-syncing service you care to name, while still
retaining the core office productivity apps. In that sense, its closest
competitor may well be Microsoft SkyDrive, which also has online document creation tools.
View all
With Google Drive, you can upload files to your
Google account, convert them to Google's file format to edit them
online, create new docs in the Web interface, collaborate with other
users in real time, and export the finished products to more standard
file formats, such as .doc, .rtf, .pdf, and so on. The latest round of
changes makes working with others in real time even more intuitive,
because you can see their profile pictures on the screen, where formerly
you only saw a line of text at the top and a color code indicating who
else was looking at or editing the file.
Because of these wide-ranging capabilities and its
dedication to collaborative document editing, Google Drive remains a
PCMag Editors' Choice. We have no hesitation recommending Google
Drive—although it is important to understand how one of the new features
works. The feature in question could potentially reveal your identity
to others, but managing it is simple when you know how it works. And as
much as Google Drive is an excellent platform and service, that doesn't
mean it's the only file-syncing service you should use either.
What's New in Drive?The newest
change in Google Drive, which will roll out to users slowly, is that
Google+ profile pictures of collaborators now appear at the top of the
file when they're viewing or editing a document. Formerly, when
collaborators opened a document, you would see a line of text reading "2
other viewers" at the top right, which opened to reveal their names or
email addresses and a color code for each person. For example, if I
invited Maria to edit a spreadsheet with me, I would see her name appear
next to a pink square at the top of the spreadsheet any time she opened
it. As she moved through cells, they would appear highlighted in pink.
The new feature adds Maria's profile picture at the
top of the document and would let me add her to my Google+ circles.
There's also now an integrated group chat feature that lets multiple
collaborators hold discussions via text while they're working.
Another fairly big addition is offline access to all
your Drive materials if you're using Google Chrome OS. To enable this
setting, go to your Google Drive page and look under the "More" button
the left for the offline access setting. Turning on this feature lets
you read and edit your files offline; changes will sync to the cloud the
next time you connect.
PrivacyThe toughest criticism
Google Drive has faced amount to concerns over privacy and IP ownership.
The new collaboration features could put your face in front of
strangers if you're not careful, but it's very easy to manage this
potential problem with an ounce of care.
Some Google Drive owners keep their documents open to
the public, and if you're signed into your Google account when you view
these files, other users will be able to see your picture and name.
When looking at public files, it's a better idea to log out of Google,
or use a different browser, and maybe also turn on incognito features if
your browser has them to keep yourself anonymous. Anonymous users are
assigned random profile pictures of animals instead, such as a dolphin,
dinosaur, or beaver.
My feeling on the matter of privacy in Google Drive
is this: If you are comfortable using Gmail, you should be comfortable
with Drive. If you are skeptical of Google's user agreements, don't use
Google products. For more in-depth analysis, see "Google Drive's Terms of Use: Lazy People Should Worry."
Main Features of DriveThe gist
of Google Drive, and the main attraction to it, is it can store your
files in the cloud where they are accessible to you and your
collaborators, and become highly searchable.
One feature related to "search" stands out: Google's
ability to scan a photo and "read" it using optical character
recognition, or identify it using its own technology. The only other app
of this kind that uses built-in OCR nearly as well is Evernote , although you have to have a paid Premium account to use it.
Google also claims Drive allows videos to be uploaded, but we encountered some issues with that part of the service.
Like many other general file-syncing services, Google
Drive works better for document files than multimedia. It's not ideally
meant to be a music and video streaming service—for that kind of
product, you'll likely need a paid service and device, such as the Verbatim Mediashare Mini,
although SugarSync does offer some neat capabilities and support for
streaming iTunes music. Amazon Cloud also offers some special support
for music and movies. However, within the Google universe you can use
Google Play in tandem with Drive (more on that in a bit).
Carryover Features from Google DocsThe
core services and functionality that were in Google Docs, namely, a
free online office suite where files are also hosted, remain intact in
Drive. Google Docs is one of the best known free alternative to Microsoft Office,
although it's entirely Web-based—there's no software to install to use
it (the only downloadable part is the app for local syncing with Drive).
As with Microsoft Office, Google Drive lets you
create word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentation documents,
forms, vector drawings, and now in beta, tables. Google hosts your
files, too, so when you log in, all your files are there. You can sort
them into customizable folders, which appear along a left pane, or just
search for what you need, using a standard search bar in the Web app.
When you create a document in
Google Drive, the file format used is Google's own. However, the system
couldn't be more flexible. You can export Google documents to more
standardized files formats, like .doc, .rtf, .ppt, .pdf, and more; and
you can import practically any document with the option of keeping it in
its native format (which may limit your ability to edit it) or
translating it into a Google doc file, which makes it editable in the
online service. I've certainly had my share of moments when I was stuck
on a computer that didn't have Microsoft Office at the very moment
someone emailed me an important file that required my feedback pronto.
Google Drive saved the day. I could open the file in GoogleDrive, edit
it, and export the revised file back out to its original form.
Occasionally some formatting will go haywire during this process, but it
gets the job done.
Price and Storage AllotmentThe
free version of Google Drive gives you 5GB of space—but in fact, that's
not the whole story. Google in fact provides much more space for free
because files you create using Google Docs (that is, in Google's
proprietary, online formats, rather than documents uploaded from another
format) don't count toward that quota, nor do files shared with you.
But if 5GB isn't enough, you can pay $2.49 per month
for 25GB or $4.99 per month for 100GB, and both those paid plans come
with bonus space for Gmail (25GB). Other plans let you choose 200GB
($9.99 per month), 400GB ($19.99 per month), all the way up to 16TB of
space ($799.99 per month).
Whether you use the paid or free version, you won't see any ads attached to Drive, anywhere–which is not the case with Gmail.
Cheapskates are better off with Microsoft's SkyDrive,
which offers 7GB (or 25GB if you were an existing user prior to April
22, 2012) and doles out an additional 20GB of space to anyone who buys Microsoft Office 365 Home Premium.
SugarSync meets Google's freebie allotment with 5GB
free space, but the bonus referrals are limitless, so you can easily
earn a lot more. Dropbox starts you out with meager 2GB and lets you
earn bonuses, but caps all free accounts at 16GB.
Installing Drive LocallyTo get
the local, desktop syncing part of Drive, you need to download a small
installer for Windows or Mac. When the installation completes, Drive
appears as a folder. If you add files to it, a recycle icon shows that
they are syncing to the cloud. It's fast, and as you'd expect, Google
makes searching for a document quick and easy.
And as with any file-syncing service, do understand that if you delete files from your local drive, they will also be deleted from Google Drive.
Supported File TypesWe tried a
number of different items: folders, Word files, Excel spreadsheets, JPEG
image files, MP3s, PDFs, an AMR audio file, an image resizing
application (.exe), and .mpeg, .wmv, and .avi files. Remember, there's
also Google Play Music,
a separate cloud service for your music files, along with rivals like
MSpot. Our only issues arose with video files. We tried an .avi file; no
dice. A .wmv? Nope. Mpeg files were hit and miss. Granted, there are
almost dozens of different video formats available. We're waiting to
hear back from Google for a list of those supported.
Videos and PhotosFor someone
used to the automatic photo and video uploading of a SugarSync, Drive
may feel awkward. Google places that capability within Google+, and also
limits your photo resolution as well. In other words, you can't take a
photo with your phone and have it automatically upload into Drive. In
other words, there's not automatic photo syncing button. But you can
take a picture with your Android phone, manually upload it to Drive, and
it will upload with full resolution. Videos can be uploaded to Drive as
well.
However, videos and image files that are stored via
Drive must be downloaded each time they're accessed. It not only costs
you time, but also counts against your bandwidth cap. On the other hand,
this also means that you have the option of storing them locally, too.
While Drive appears to use its own generic media player for video, Drive
will open music via Play Music.
The coolest new feature in
Google Drive is its ability to "read" photos with OCR technology. The
only problem is that this feature seems confusing at first glance. If
you take a photo of a page of a book, the photo will save as an image.
But if you choose to save it as a Google document, the photo will be
attached to a searchable block of text—not replaced by it, so you have
side-by-side views of the OCR interpretation and the original. Google
does an excellent job with OCR. Say you want to quickly sneak a snapshot
of your favorite recipe into your own arsenal, well, this feature is
just the thing.
Drive for CollaborationGoogle
Drive excels at supporting collaborative projects, which is something
other file-syncing services don't offer and big reason it's an Editors'
Choice. It offers so many appealing features and capabilities that
you're missing out if you don't use it. But there's nothing stopping you
from using more than one service, like another Editors' Choice among
file-syncing services, SugarSync or Dropbox, not to mention other
options like SkyDrive, Box, and Amazon Cloud. Having more than one
service lets you compartmentalize your home and work files, or keep
photos separate from documents, and so forth. It also lets you decide
which of your files to put in more secure cloud spaces and which to
leave to the whims of Google's money-making teams.
Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403546,00.asp
MS-SkyDrive
MSRP
$0.00
$0.00
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Pros
Simple, clear, consistent interface. Clients for Mac, iOS, and Android, as well as Windows and Windows Phone. Fetch any file from a PC you set up. Syncing. Web interface to files and media. Photo slideshows. 7GB free storage space.
- Cons No music matching or Web streaming. Synced folders not for collaboration, just your own files. Windows 8 desktop mode requires separate installation.
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Bottom Line
With Web, Android, iPhone, Mac, and Windows clients, and a nifty "fetch" feature, Microsoft's cloud solution, SkyDrive, is one of the most complete offerings of its type.
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. All users get 7GB free storage space, and, if you're a longtime SkyDrive account holder (since before April 22, 2012), you get 25GB free. This compares with 5GB free for iCloud and Google Drive (though if you convert docs to Google format, storage is free), and 2GB for Dropbox. You can add 20GB to SkyDrive for $10 a year, and 100GB for $50. Here's how the pricing compares with the other services:
| SkyDrive | iCloud | Google Drive | Amazon Cloud Drive | |
| Free storage | 7GB | 5GB | 5GB | 5GB |
| Add 20 GB | $10 | $40 | N/A | $10 |
| Add 50 GB | $25 | $100 | N/A | $25 |
| Add 100 GB | $50 | N/A | $60 | $50 |
Device Syncing
Microsoft likes to refer to SkyDrive as a "device cloud" and with Windows 8 PCs and Windows Phones, the moniker makes sense. The service can sync settings and apps on those types of devices, while clients for iOS, Android, and Mac OS X give users of those devices access to the files stored in SkyDrive's online folders. Like iCloud for iPhones and iPads, SkyDrive lets Windows Phone users automatically upload photos taken with the phone's camera to SkyDrive's camera roll, so that the photos are quickly available for viewing online, in a SkyDrive folder on a PC, or in a Windows 8 PC's Photos app.
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Another service in the realm of device syncing is the ability to sign into your account and magically reproduce a previous machine you've set up—color and background themes, social accounts, user photo, browser favorites and history, and even apps. SkyDrive accomplishes this for both Windows 8 PCs and Windows Phones. In Windows 8, the service goes even further, by allowing third-party apps to take advantage of your cloud storage. Apps and sites can even use the service for single sign-on with your permission.
SkyDrive Clients
SkyDrive is built into Windows 8 and Windows Phone, as long as you've signed into a Microsoft account. But what if you use other technology platforms? SkyDrive includes apps for not only Windows 7 and 8, but for Mac OS X, iOS, and Android. For other mobile platforms such as Blackberry, a mobile Web interface is available, and for desktop access when you're not at your own computer, a full feature Web app is available. 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?"
Another SkyDrive option for mobile users is the OneNote app. It's available for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone, and on the Web. This lets you create notes that will be automatically synced to all your SkyDrive access points.
Folder and File Syncing
Forgetting about "devices" for a moment, SkyDrive offers another desktop computer-centric function—file and folder syncing. This convenience is similar to what you get with Dropbox ($9.99 a month, 4 stars), Nomadesk ($50 a year, 3 stars), and SugarSync ($4.99 a month, 4.5 stars). In the past, Microsoft had separated its syncing service with names like Live Mesh and Live Sync, and (way back) FolderShare. I for one, find the joining of online storage and syncing into one cloud service a refreshing simplification of a previously somewhat confusing set of systems. SkyDrive syncing on computers differs from the earlier 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. It also adds a truly cool feature called Fetch—more about that in a moment.
The desktop clients for SkyDrive syncing run on Windows Vista and later and are quick to install. The setup wizard for the client lets you create an account 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. Setup also places a cloud icon in your system tray, from which you can open your synced folder or change settings. You can change its location from the default top level under your user folder.
When you place a photo, document, or other item in the created SkyDrive folder, it magically appears in any of your other SkyDrive clients on any of your other computers. One drawback compared with Dropbox or Nomadesk is you can't share a folder so that its contents will always be synced for a colleague. But then again, that's more of a business-related capability, and as such it's available in Office's SharePoint Workspaces.
For a quick test, I went over to my Windows 8 PC and created a new folder in the SkyDrive app, which appeared seconds later in a Windows 7 machine's SkyDrive folder that I had set up. Including SkyDrive in Windows Explorer is incredibly helpful because you can save work from any application to your cloud storage directly, without having to go to a website.
The Windows 8 SkyDrive App
As mentioned, SkyDrive plays a big role for Windows 8, which ships with a SkyDrive app that you can recognize by the cloud on its blue Start page tile. Clicking this tile takes you into another grid of tiles, each representing a folder or file you've stored on the service. Folders containing image files display one of the images 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 view Details, such as the item's date and size.
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 over a tile or thumbnail displays the filename, date last modified, file size, and with whom it's shared. 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. These options change when you right click on a file tile, adding four new buttons on the left—Clear selection, Download, Delete, and Open with.
Even more cloud-centric 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 no 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. It turns out that you have to install the same desktop client in Windows 8 desktop that you would in Windows 7. 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 mode and you've already signed into your account.
SkyDrive on the Web and Fetch
Web access to all your cloud data is one thing you don't get in Apple's iCloud. Microsoft has been putting a lot of effort into updating the Web client for SkyDrive. Just in mid-August, the company released a new online version of SkyDrive. The interface bears a striking resemblance to that of the SkyDrive Windows 8 new-style app, except the folder tiles are all the same size. The Web app is linked with other Microsoft online services through a top switcher menu that includes Mail (either Outlook.com or Hotmail), People (the social network-aggregator app), and Calendar. It's a very fast and clean interface, with a left panel of menu choices including Files, Recent docs, Shared, Groups, and PCs.
This last item may be the most interesting: For PCs you've installed the desktop client on and authorized, you can pull any files using Fetch, even if the files aren't in the SkyDrive folder. When I chose the PCs option from the Web interface's left rail, I was greeted by a message saying "Security check! To connect to this PC we need you to enter a security code. This extra step only takes a minute and will help protect your computer from unauthorized access." When I clicked the "Sign in with security code" link, I was told to sign in on a computer that's connected to my account. Of course, for this to work, the PC your fetching files from has to be on and running the SkyDrive client.
Once I jumped all the security hurdles, I could browse the entire disk of the target PC. I could download any files found there, or upload them to SkyDrive (which feels a little odd, since it seemed like I was browsing SkyDrive). I could also view all the files' pertinent properties in a right-side panel—type, size, and dates created and modified. The Fetch feature is a great idea, though it seems to be only available in a very limited set of circumstances. You're probably better off just saving files you think you may need remote access to your SkyDrive cloud folders.
Media Support
Microsoft's cloud service handles all the most common types of files you might want to store in the cloud, including documents, music, photos, and video.
Documents. Not only can you download and upload document files, as you can with iCloud's Web interface, but you can actually view and edit them online with SkyDrive using the integrated Office Web apps. In fact, SkyDrive serves as the main folder and file location for all your Office Web documents, just as Google Drive now does for Google Docs. One Google Drive feature missing from SkyDrive is the former's OCR, which converts scanned images to text. Google Drive, however, does a better job of multi-author collaboration—it lets users see others' changes instantly, while Office Web only shows that a paragraph is locked for editing, and only shows the changes after a refresh.
Music. As with Google Drive, one thing you won't get with SkyDrive is music streaming from your online cloud storage. The iTunes in the Cloud piece of the iCloud service performs this feat for Apple devices and computers, while Google Play does so for the Android folks. Nor do you get a "match" service like those in iCloud or Amazon Cloud Player, which offer high-quality copies of your music without the need for uploading them.
Photos and Video. SkyDrive does a pretty impressive job of displaying photos and videos in its Web interface. You can share and tag these, and when you do share, unlike in the past, the recipient doesn't have to sign into a SkyDrive account. You can also specify read and edit rights.
Using SkyDrive From Other Windows 8 Modern Apps
What really makes SkyDrive an integral part of the Windows 8 ecosystem is the fact that any Windows 8 modern-style app can take advantage of its cloud storage. Microsoft has made it really simple for developers to do this, as a Building Windows 8 blog post described. It's early on in the Windows 8 app store, but I managed to find a few that already use SkyDrive. The FotoEditor app, a sort of Instagram without the social networking let me save my distorted image to SkyDrive. It also let me open photos for editing from my cloud folders. We'll definitely see more extensive use of SkyDrive in third-party apps as the Window Store fills out, particularly those that will use app state and settings syncing.
Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2409569,00.asp
