SkyDrive is a threat to Dropbox

Probably against the grain here, but agree. Not so much SkyDrive but more the integration between Mesh Skydrive, windows, mac, free office web apps and windows phone 7.<p>It's a seriously impressive, well integrated platform that costs nothing and doesn't tie you into keeping the data in the cloud. There's a copy always on your machines.<p>no-one is doing it as well as Microsoft if you ask me. Outside the mainstream tech press trendy Microsoft bashing I know a lot of people who are switching back to Live and Office 365. They're sneaking in the back door while everyone is bitching about them.

Dropbox is now at the inflection point of having become a standard. All of the various cloud-drive solutions are gauging themselves in comparison to them; as such, they have won.<p>Will SkyDrive manage to become a good competitor? I would expect so, especially given how Microsoft can push into the field by piggybacking it on Office, etc.<p>However, <i>should</i> Microsoft? No.<p>For Microsoft, SkyDrive will not sell more copies of Windows or Office. Instead, it will simply be another waste of money and resources on a feature that will not sway people to their products. If you're going to get Office, you're going to get Office - a cloud drive won't convince you over some other offering.

With a 25GB/user limit less than 1% of the users need more than 7GB of storage.<p>That sounds like an argument in favor of keeping the 25GB cap. Does Microsoft not trust their own data? Are they really allocating 25GB/user currently, do they need the revenue from the 1% that will now have to pay or what is going on?

Lack of Android and Linux support is still a concern. MS has to address this or enable third party apps access to these platforms in order for it to be a real threat to Dropbox. Especially Android since it's one of the fastest growing OS out there.

SkyDrive is a threat to Dropbox because they're cheaper? I think Drew Houston said it near the beginning when asked about competitors, "Do you use any of those?" That's the difference.

Anyone coming up with a personal equivalent to Dropbox? as in same simple interface, but storage is a multi-terabyte box at your home/office (instead of a few gigabytes "out there")?

Yes much like Windows Mobile is an Android killer.

I wouldn't say that.<p>Dropbox is good because is ridiculously simple. I've been using Windows 8 + Skydrive full time and well, it's not a sunshine.<p>It's buggy, and just upload files (not folders) and I don't believe it will get so much better after the official launch.<p>And yes, Dropbox is probably screwed. I've been using SugarSync just because it gives me more free space.<p>If google drive is just as good as dropbox, well, you know the drill.

It's certainly becoming more impressive, though I think the network effect of Dropbox will certainly help them along.<p>Having the built in Office apps in Skydrive and the ability to have the same word doc available on every computer as well as the phone is very handy.

I don't think amount of free space is a great competitive advantage. If that is the case Sugarsync should be at least 2x bigger than Dropbox (since they are give 2x more free space than Dropbox).<p>I believe amount of free space only become competitive advantage <i>after</i> services have the same service quality as competition <i>and</i> the same level of integration with applications using the cloud storage (editing, collaboration, project management, photo sharing, etc.).<p>As of now Dropbox has way more applications supporting it than SkyDrive so it seems Dropbox is still ahead.

I just got my ridiculously named teenager mail address to 25gb skydrive, alas, I'm not going to use it because I can't ever send files with that name to anybody. Registered a new account, it forced me to give out my ZIP code, and bam, only 7 GB, I was thinking that offer would be available for all customers before launch. Well, I'm already. pretty happy with my paid dropbox account, and Microsoft's out a potentially paying customer.

I would say Windows Mesh is more a competitor than SkyDrive because its folder sync and online storage capacity. Neither are getting anywhere near as much traction as DropBox, but it would do MS good to merge these services asap.<p>Threat? No. An perfectly viable alternative? Certainly.

The sad thing about Dropbox is that my free Dropbox account has less space than my free gmail account. If I found a service which was as reliable and provided at least 7 gigs of free space, I would jump ship w/o thinking twice.

SkyDrive supports really awesome collaborative editing of Office file formats in the Office 2010 desktop apps. That got me (and a few friends of mine) to use it instead of Google Docs for collaborative editing of documents.

<i>Microsoft has an app for Windows and for Mac OS X that integrates SkyDrive with the local OS</i><p>So, no Linux? Then SkyDrive is no threat to Dropbox, at least to my household.

Since when is PCWorld's opinion worth anything?

We need a plugin that automatically encrypts everything <i>before</i> it goes to the cloud and then decrypts it when we download. So when the subpoena start to rain our data is safe regardless of what Microsoft or Dropbox are forced to do by the gov