Thursday 23 May 2013

Cloud back up

I need to be able to access my business/client data around the clock wherever I am at any given moment. At present I'm using an iMac in the office, Macbook Air in the evening for work and ipad/iphone for remote access.

This all worked very well historically using Microsoft Skydrive as the cloud hosting service for all content related to client reports, quotes etc. That was until my free storage with skydrive was exceeded. At that point automatic updating to the cloud finished and for a couple of weeks I've been replicating content over both the Air and iMac whilst deciding which cloud service to use moving forward. In effect Amazon Cloud drive & Skydrive are the cheapest - at £ 6 per annum for an additional 20GB, Google Drive is £ 17.49 per annum for 25GG and Skydrive is $10 for an extra 20GB per annum. On balance given that I'd already got everything set up with Skydrive I decided to simply throw ten bucks their direction and carry on as is. Skydrive is an OK interface on-line and the IOS app seems to work well enough.

Problem though, despite having a '.co.uk' hotmail/outlook account that links to Skydrive, having registered this in the UK seven or eight years ago, Microsoft thinks this is a US based account and will not accept payment from a UK credit/debit card. Frankly for the sake of copying a few folders into a newly installed Amazon Cloud folder on my iMAc which replicated instantly over to the Macbook Air it was a no-brainer - moved to Amazon - currently uploading the data into the cloud - seems to be working OK - there is no IOS app but a bookmarked webpage works well enough in Safari if I need to access on an IOS device - job done, took about 30 minutes and Microsoft have lost another customer. Only $10 per annum - but how many UK customers will they lose today for this reason ?

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