SkyDrive gets better, but still has room for improvement
Windows Live SkyDrive, one item on Microsoft's ever-growing list of Windows Live applications, has finally been taken out of beta and declared official by the SkyDrive team.
SkyDrive offers users carrying a Windows Live ID access to 5GBs of free online storage space - up from the 1GB available during the beta.
In addition to the bump in storage space, the SkyDrive team has now rolled out its service to 38 countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Finland, France, Great Britain, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey and the USA.
The SkyDrive team states on its official blog: "This release also includes bug fixes and improvements to make the site even faster and more reliable. We’re proud of this release - so proud, in fact, that we’re officially removing the Beta tag!"
I had tried the SkyDrive beta a few months back and found the service to be a little too slow for my liking. I'll be hoping the now official release is indeed faster. However, aside from speed, there are other improvements still needed.
The service still only allows users to upload individual files, as opposed to complete folders, and what users really need is some form of client to integrate Windows and SkyDrive. Unfortunately, we may not see the kind of Windows and Live integration that we need until Microsoft's next operating system; Windows 7.
Nonetheless, 5GBs of free storage space isn't a bad deal by any means, get yours at the official Windows Live SkyDrive homepage: SkyDrive.Live.com
