Microsoft's OneDrive price hike has wrecked its cloud strategy Microsoft's changes to its OneDrive personal cloud storage prices reflect badly on the company, and have left users angry and bewildered. Most people have at least 30GB of free OneDrive storage: 15GB as standard, and an additional 15GB bonus easily obtained by setting the camera roll on a mobile device to use OneDrive for …
With my personal hard discs - I just add as many as I want for MY data.
So much for cloud - if you have to decide which pictures of your kids or long lost relatives you want to keep - just to be under some arbitrary threshold.
Also, thinking about averages, there will ALWAYS be values above and below the average, irrespective of how many times you average the resulting data, the trend is always downwards - just like they use the average speed to lower the speed limit on some roads in the UK ... which is equally barmy.
Nice!
I also use this storage strategy, and as far as I can tell the "company" that is currently keeping track of my personal data has not; gone out of business, sold my data to a "more-evil" vendor, lost it, got it stolen by Ukrainian script-kidniks, accidentally erased it, gave a copy to the government for "safe keeping", eaten it, eaten it then crapped it out then tried to put it back on a storage device, dropped it on the data center floor and had it get caught underneath a rack and the guy with the rack keys is at lunch and ... you see what I mean.
I just priced up my home storage: between 0.25 and 0.30 US$ / month / 50GB depending on scale (dual redundant, replace every two years, includes electricity). The other bonuses are my setup does not suffer from slow internet days and I get two free (wimpy) servers. Microsoft would have a tough sell at one tenth of their new price.
Yea, got that covered too. External hard drives with encrypted content stored at family members houses and of course we do the same for them, or you can use safety deposit boxes or some random cloud provider as backup if you prefer, then you have no real risk if they fail, or change their pricing. Just find another one, or split your data across them.
Syncing content across devices - no need, just like I don't take my toaster to work every day. Just because I have it, doesn't mean I need to have it with me all the time. Do you really need last years tax return, or the letter to the school, or some random data for an app your various mobile devices can't read to be with you all the time ?. It's also more secure if you loose a mobile device - no risk of your data being accessed.
Of course, if you prefer the vagrant approach of carrying all your belongings with you then that's your choice.
"Of course, if you prefer the vagrant approach of carrying all your belongings with you then that's your choice."
Now there's a thought. Once upon a time we had Windows for Teletubbies. With the cloud first approach maybe they were aiming at Windows for bag ladies.
"Yea, got that covered too. External hard drives with encrypted content stored at family members houses "
What do you do about the hideously slow upload rate that your ISP provides? well mine does anyway.
I like to sync my NASes by via gigabit switch. Thinking off putting one in the garage to cover "off site" support - theres a 6 metre fire gap :)
Fibre broadband around here, so 60Mbps down, 16Mbls up are typical.
Once you have done the initial copy, the data volumes are low, so just start with the new backup on site across the LAN, then switch to the WAN for the deltas only. If you need to do a full restore, then you might need to go and drink coffee with the family first.
'"Yea, got that covered too. External hard drives with encrypted content stored at family members houses "
What do you do about the hideously slow upload rate that your ISP provides? well mine does anyway.'
Whaaa? External drives! Unplug them & take them there, no ISP involved. Bandwidth similar to a van-load of tapes on the motorway. The bandwidth will be fine, it's just the latency he has to worry about.
"Microsoft's OneDrive price hike has wrecked its cloud strategy"
Nope, it's much more cunning than that. They are giving everyone affected a year's free Office 365 (1TB of OneDrive space) remember....Once that expires, a significant percentage of people will be too lazy to move their stuff and it will renew onto a paid subscription....happy days for Microsoft.
Microsoft are storming ahead in cloud - it's primarily for this reason that they recently announced record profits and the Microsoft share price is the highest it's been for ~ 15 years...
When I was testing Windows 10 (not any longer) I came to appreciate the point of OneDrive as a means to keep multiple Win10 installations up with each other - without it the concept of 'One OS across all your devices' is pretty meaningless.
That use of cloud storage is a little different from the idea of using it for bulk 'unlimited' storage, and I can see how Microsoft might have realised that the free storage had to be reined back.
One point I noticed on the Insider forums was a common complaint about OneDrive - ie that it was no longer possible to have simple links to the OneDrive storage - you had to download it all. Maybe that was a sign of the strategy to limit the free storage - discouraging people from using it to share massive amounts of data.
It's all a bit 'meh' to me as (1) Transition to Win10 is off my 'to do' list and (2) I would never have used more than a gigabyte or two of OneDrive storage anyway - anything important to me isn't going anywhere near cloud storage if I have a choice.
"What we're they storing to fill 75tb?
They must be the hoarders of the cloud storage customer world."
Big data sets, for example. A friend of mine works in fMRI research, and each data set she works on is 2TB or so, so she has to go with the external hard drive option if she wants to work at home.
It's why I have no plans to switch from Windows 7 to Windows 10.
I own Windows 7, and I have serious concerns about how much Microsoft plans to charge me and others in future for service updates (or simply to keep the OS running on old hardware) once they've migrated the majority of users.
This cloud decision makes me believe it will be "as much as they think they can get away with".
"I own Windows 7"
Errr no you don't... you have a tightly controlled licence to use it.
Price hikes.... did anyone seriously believe that Microsoft wouldn't turn the screws to extract more profit for shareholders once they got sufficient users ?
They run a business, not a charity. Unlike the Chocolate Factory they do not have the advertising revenue stream and have to make the ROI somewhere.
Windows 10 users will feel it in the wallet eventually. It's just a matter of time to get enough users hooked. Anyone who believes otherwise must also believe in fairy tales !
For some of us, it's being stuck there. Not about habit or addiction. We buy hardware that has support for one or maybe two OS's. In my case it's a laser cutter. I'm stuck with Windows. Not to say that I wouldn't got to Mint (and am planning on it) but I will still need a dedicated Win machine to run the cutter. I know of a bunch of other folks in the same basket... specialized hardware and only one OS available.... But, we are as a group and individually testing and looking for solutions so we don't have replace some expensive equipment.
"...and Linux desktops still look like they were designed by 7 year olds."
Funny, at work I have a Windows desktop alongside an Ubuntu one and use a variety of apps on each every day. There is far more visual consistency on the Ubuntu desktop between the OS and applications than there is on the Windows one, and even between Office and Windows itself (Office doesn't inherit the OS theme settings).
Ubuntu isn't as sexy as say OS X, but it's certainly a lot easier on the eyes than Windows 10 and there are far more visual cues. Red Hat has a more simple and professional look by comparison, if not a little boring, but certainly not amateur. Aero in Win 7 still looks pretty slick to this day so it's sad that things have gone backwards on that platform.
Even to a Linux newbie the Peppermint (Ubuntu) desktop looks logical and uncluttered compared to Windows. A bit plain-Jane maybe, but this is an operating system not entertainment. Hasn't got all the Win toys as standard and CDs and MP3s stutter but, most stuff works or can (presumably) be added.
Mostly I'm impressed by opening and closing speed -- and that updates are quick and trouble-free.
Cloud storage makes sense for portables but, for a desktop PC, external drives are cheap.
" Linux desktops still look like they were designed by 7 year olds."
Those must be the ones still trying to look like Windows for Teletubbies. You do realise, don't you, that with Linux you not only have a choice* of desktop systems but you can also theme them to a greater or lesser extent.
*If you're a Windows user - or a marketing shill who's probably actually using a Mac - you may need to look this up in a dictionary.
Alright Mr Snarky McPissy. Look up Hobson's choice, because that is what you have in freetard land.* Choice is great, and it's what all you freetards chant when challenged, but what good is it when it's all shit?
*Hobsons choice is what Mac and PC users have, still better than all the choice that is available in Linux land. Seem my original comment struck a nerve with the loudmouthed over-represented freetards here...
"but what good is it when it's all shit?"
It depends what's all shit. As it happens I spent the greater part of the afternoon trying to work out a problem with a Windows 7 laptop owned by a friend of my wife's. It had been OK until a few days ago, when it was working all morning & not since. Neither IE nor Firefox worked - the former came up blank with "not responding"on the title bar, the latter displayed nothing, just a busy cursor for a few seconds. Internet connection was there - ping to Google worked and my Mint laptop had no problems. Ran virus scan. Ran Windows diagnostics which couldn't identify a problem. Disabled firewall. Re-enabled firewall. Nothing. Eventually I removed the adaptor for a wireless mouse, rebooted and got a major hang - nothing responding but the fan working overtime. Cut the power, replaced the dongle, rebooted & got the screen offering safe mode, went for a normal reboot & the thing started working properly for no obvious reason.
Yup. All shit.
That's UX, not UI. The UX on most recent desktop Linuxes is still woefully lacking, and advice online still tends to defer to the command line almost immediately. The UI's are just badly designed. They aren't nice to use and the paradigms are all over the place. OpenStep is out there and it is arguably one of the best desktop environments ever made, but it is eschewed for Gnome/Mint [Cinnamon|Mate]/Unity/KDE, which is maddening! Defeat from the jaws of victory.
"The cost of storage continues to fall"
But it has a cost.
Microsoft was giving it away for free.
The laws of economics say: All resources are finite, and for a free resource there is infinite demand.
Hence this cloud business at some point has to make money somehow, by that point MS, Google, AWS will have what they came here for.
"That and Macs are "overpriced"™️ and Linux desktops still look like they were designed by 7 year olds."
Better designed by a smart 7 year old than a bunch of blind idiots which is the impression the Win 8 GUI gave and the Win10 not being appreciably better other than having a start menu.
That is as spurious as the Linux fanboys who won't use Windows based on how it was 20+ years ago.
You need to actually try a modern version of Linux. You may have valid complaints about it (I've yet to find one that is quite 100% "right" for all of my uses but never struggle to find one that can do what I need...).
Did you ever see the horror that was Windows 8?
Windows 10 has some really dubious design decisions - I found out last night by accident that pinch-to-zoom works on the wireless selection window!
I use Windows 99% of the time. I've built my career in the Microsoft world, so you can hardly call me a Linux fanboy, but.... (and this is to both sides of the table), do try to keep up!
"You need to actually try a modern version of Linux"
Tried it. Amongst many other failings, like having to compile software with obscure text commands before you can install it?! the most notable for me was that to change the config you often have to edit in a text editor multiple randomly distributed and inconsistently formatted text files. (Which means no granular change control / permissioning / auditing) It's like going back to Windows from 20 years ago, but worse!
"Tried it."
No you haven't and it's brutally obvious when you recycle 1990's headlines.
I admin a network that has hundreds of Linux desktops and thousands of Linux servers. No compilation needed. You simply don't need to compile software unless you have very, very specific requirements. Most software comes in RPM or Deb packages and with a respective repository. That way you use the same mechanism for updating everything, and you don't have to play lottery when patching, hoping that nothing breaks.
Software from lazy vendors that is distributed as a tarball (or worse, a self-extracting binary) is usually pretty simple to convert into a proper RPM or Deb package if you are working at scale. Yum/RPM and it's ilk make Windows Update and MSI packages look positively clumsy by comparison.
Obviously much the above isn't in the realm of the home user, but for vendors that aren't lazy, all that a home user needs to do installing their products from proper Deb packages is simply a matter of download, double-click, enter an admin password and click Install. So when done properly, it's very straightforward for basic users and scales easily for sysadmins.
Text files have permissions applied to them as appropriate and change control is as simple as Git or Subversion. Try that with the registry mess. Throw in Puppet and you get massive scalability as well. It's easy.
I cut my teeth on Windows and spent ten years as a Windows systadmin. Trying out 'nix was a breath of fresh air. Sure it has plenty of faults (everything does), but let's talk about the real ones instead of the tripe above.
I use a mouse and keyboard to game on my console.....even my son admits I am a damn sight better that way than failing to work the controller properly.....the mouse enables really fine control on a selected X-Y which I could never achieve with a controller
In my case because I recognise that under the hood it's as solid as the rest, and on top, the GUI is the most productive of them all.
Proof, should it be required, is the looooong wait for another popular OS to allow window resizing from places other than the bottom corner, and an equally long wait for things to maximize properly. Small things, I know, but things you do over and over again and want to work properly.
My primary machine is my Air when on the move, but it's always a joy to get back to my Windows desktop. I can even search for stuff easily on it.
"Proof, should it be required, is the looooong wait for another popular OS to allow window resizing from places other than the bottom corner, and an equally long wait for things to maximize properly"
I'll give you the first, but the second?
Nope.
It's a different metaphor and one that existed before Microsoft ham-fistedly copied Xerox and Apple (No, Apple paid Xerox and many of the PARC developers ended up working on the Macintosh OS...). OS X is, ironically, a windowed environment where each window is a document. With Windows, each window is a self contained program. It's the same as saying that the command shortcuts are wrong on a Mac because Windows. Microsoft settled on control as a modifier because their limited OS didn't use it. Don't forget that the majority of UI technologies were initially developed a PARC and then Apple. Windows came way after. Then there is Microsoft's IP theft from OS/2. Another debate.
Linux though. Wow. Gnome 3.1x is just awful and KDE is as unstable as ever. Unity is more opinionated than OS X and Mint's offerings not particularly fresh, looking like something out of a comic book with their twee derviant art icons. XFCE is from the 1990's.
"Why are people still using Windows?"
Because running a Linux distro, any of them, reduces the functionality and ease of use, of your PC; try installing and running Planetside 2, or The Wicher 3, or Dragon Age: inquisition on a Linux distro for instance.
Driver support in Linux is still a minefield and installing software a nightmare of compiling and other arcane command line rubbish. I like to use my PC to "do stuff"; I don't want to spend hours "playing" with the operating system.....
"Ah, an 'expert' - an expert with no experience of the subject that is."
An example, Plex Media Server:-
*1. Windows*
Download the Windows Installer .exe file
Run the installer
Follow the usual installation method
At the final screen, click the Launch button. If you don't select this, launch the Server from the Start button
The Plex Media Server will launch and install an icon to the System Tray (bottom right of the screen) To setup the Plex Media Server, choose Media Manager... from the Plex icon in the system tray.
2. *Linux*
Ubuntu
Download the .deb package
run sudo dpkg -i plexmediaserver_0.9.8.18.290-11b7fdd_amd64.deb (replacing the last filename with the name of the package you downloaded)
To setup the Server, on the same machine you installed the Server on, open a browser window, and go to http://127.0.0.1:32400/web.
Note: The Plex Media Server runs as the user "plex" by default. The plex user must have read and execute permissions to your media directories and files! For more details on how to do this, see the Linux Permissions Guide.
Did you spot that command line "run sudo dpkg -i plexmediaserver_0.9.8.18.290-11b7fdd_amd64.deb (replacing the last filename with the name of the package you downloaded)"?
Did you see the difference between Windows and Linux? I rest my case....
"Did you spot that command line "run sudo dpkg -i plexmediaserver_0.9.8.18.290-11b7fdd_amd64.deb (replacing the last filename with the name of the package you downloaded)"?"
I did - I also just installed Plex into a Mint VM by a one-click install from their web-site without any cli. I also note that no compiling either by your method or mine was necessary.
The permissions are a fact of life and one of the reasons for the security of Linux. Again in most distros no cli work is necessary
"nstalling software a nightmare of compiling and other arcane command line rubbish."
Right - you make a list of programs that need to be compiled by normal users and I'll make a list of the most common ones I use that don't. and the ones I use that do.
Firefox
Thunderbird
LibreOffice
Google Earth
VLC
LibreOffice
Virtualbox
Skype
Darktable - RAW photo developer
Kdenlive - video editor
Inkscape - vector graphics
MPLAB - PIC programming system
Hugin - panorama creator
Gwenview - image viewer
CUPS - print server
NFSD - fileserver
And ones that I use that need compiling are all my own programs, nothing else !
Don't have to take my word for it - I'm sure others here will confirm
"Same here. In particular I don't want to spend those long hours each month while Windows Update hogs everything. So I don't use Windows."
If your PC take "long hours" to run Windows Updates then you, possibly, need to spend some money on new hardware. I'd say my PC does all the monthly Windows Updates, including the ones for Office, in less than 20 minutes.
Trust and Microsloth seem just do not to go together... Windows 8, 8.1, the shenanigans with 10 and the probability that they will either spam your desktop or charge a fee not to get the spam. The Office storage price hike, and now this one. Is there anything left? Azure? I'm waiting for the corporates to start getting hit with a price hike. I'm sure things will really start get interesting then.
I prefer someone such as Google or Amazon for example that charge me a modest fee for storage and services who does not promise unlimited storage without substantial fee. 'Slurp seems bent on destroy customer trust with this and other stupidities. All companies depend on repeat customers, lose them and you are toast.
I remember talking to a pipe & valve sales I knew one time. He said it took about 7 or 8 cold calls on a new customer to get a sale. But with an existing customer, drop in a few times a year, and will be getting a reasonable number of orders. More importantly you will be consider when the customer is in the market if the customer trusts you.
I laughed with true Schadenfreude upon hearing this debacle in the making yesterday. Poor old Microsoft, weaving from a shot in the foot that was Windows 8, another bullet clipping a thigh with Windows 10, and not yet down or out but staggering about the room in blinding pain, for some unfathomable reason decides to punch itself clean in the face with this cloud 'strategy'.
Microsoft has always and since like forever based it's business on a very simple spin-cycle: ""Adopt a technology, then screw it up (and it's users over), finally abandon it for something Newer and Shinier".
Bit of a premature ejaculation this time, but it's the same as always. The funny part is that the impeccable timing leaves the Microsoft "partners" shafted; Stuck with loads of sales leads that they will now not make - and right before the Christmas Blow-the-rest-of-the-budget Bonanza too.
Bwahahahaha!
Oh, would you look at that! Yet another conpany changes, or completely goes against their word, on their cloud services while telling us that "Cloud is the future!", and we should be lining up to sign on!
Shocking! Simply shocked, and appalled!!
[/s]
Yes indeed, cloud prove itself again as a product worth getting involved with...
Sure, consumers will be annoyed, but this is a sign that Microsoft is moving towards dedicating themselves to being a full time enterprise cloud provider. The freemium model is great for consumers, but it doesn't do any good for the company. For instance, you see why Box, a dedicated cloud provider, had such awful financials with that model (and it's why they're moving away from it too). Satya Nadella is a cloud guy who knows what he's doing, and the truth is, the future of the cloud is in enterprises, not in the consumer market. Leave IoT for the consumer market. JMO I suppose.
"This is a good move"
No. You can stop allowing new people to sign up, but pulling the rug from under your consumer base makes you look fickle. That might be acceptable for companies that don't have any competitors (hello, Microsoft in other markets) but MS isn't exactly the global leader in cloud services. Consumers desert it and when the manager decides he (and it will be a 'he') wants to go cloudy nonsense and the IT guy says you can go with Google, Amazon or Microsoft, he's heard of all those and so doesn't care which, and MS isn't going to high on the list now.
As other people have said, if you are entering into a service contract with a company, you want to know that a) they will still be around in the near future, and b) they don't screw you over with product withdrawals and price hikes. Google is famous for the former of those from b), and Microsoft for the latter. And we go with Amazon.
but pulling the rug from under your consumer base makes you look fickle
Hah - The KPI says "Grow Sales". This means that we don't have to give a crap about existing customers*, new customers are better because they bringeth the Bonus!
*) Snot rollers and navel de-fluffers the lot of them, since they are still existing customers.
I can see why they did it, but the way they did it feels like a panic reaction they didn't think through far enough. Maybe there was the threat of OneDrive going into 'Temporary Incapable To Sustain Ususal Performance' mode, and someone decided to pull the plug, as it were?
Several clients using 50TB+ of non-static data is bound to create problems, plus maybe the odd hardware failure, plus a server farm behind schedule - at a certain point things don't add up, they multiply.
There is bound to be more than just one PHB who thought it was a good idea to put all his operational data and the backup archives into the free cloud of these nice Microsoft people (and forced his IT staff to do it). Why not, it's free! Think of the money we can safe!
If the average usage of the service is 5GB, then the 70+ TB users are a rounding error in the statistics and not cause for panic. With the number of users OneDrive is supposed to have, the few users who are uploading vast quantities of data will be lost in the sea of small updates by millions of people. If you can't handle a dozen heavy users of your service, you haven't a snowballs' proverbial of handling millions of concurrent connections.
I think that the heavy users were brought up as a smokescreen to generate understanding in favor of Microsoft. Why the timing of this eludes me, but it is far less important than the all the justified backlash going on. The marketroid who thought this up is going to have a hard time pitching for a salary raise come December.
Oh well, just another bullet in the foot for Microsoft. Foot must be made of lead by now.
I would rather put my data into a cloud where there's an apparently profitable business model to sustain it rather than 'unlimited and free'. I have no problem with what they've done and put the complaints down to people who want something for nothing, and people who just generally love to bitch about anything MS.
You are, I think, correct in your first point.
However it's more likely that the bitching is coming from the people who put their trust in Microsoft. They've now been kicked in the face twice haven't you noticed all those posts in other threads from people telling us they've been MS stalwarts but are now moving to Mint because of W10? The rest of us are just standing on the sidelines shouting "Told you so!".
Not just the usual bitching (that too thanks)
I get the feeling that at the very minimum MS can be suspected of staging some kind of deception here.
That is what most people is really complaining about.
That and the realisation for some kind souls that cloud means you can be cut off from your data with no warning.
Hands up those who did not see that coming?
Really - please send me your email addresses as I can also think of a few "as much as you can eat for free (until its not longer for free)" swindles to get you signed up on. Did you really expect not to have to pay the ferryman eventually.
My forecast - cloud is next - it just haven't yet reached the critical mass for the shaving of the sheep to begin.
At least where I live, Lumia's were widely advertised with the promise of bundling 15Gb of free OneDrive storage. Taking that away might catch the eye of consumer protection agencies. No doubt there is some fine print somewhere which allows Microsoft to renege on its promise, but the local consumer ombudsman has in the past often taken a dim view of such tricks, when ordinary people are concerned.
Of course, allowing "unlimited" storage was a stupid move on Microsoft's part, I don't care if they replace that with, say, 50Tb. But 5Gb for the free account is too little in this day and age, when you can get 2Tb drives at your local supermarket for 100€. I currently have a total of 40Gb "grandfathered" from their various older free offers, when they cut that to 5Gb it is a pain.
"There's no problem with cloud storage as the shareware OS doesn't support that."
Your prejudices are showing again. Apart from the fact that you don't know the huge difference between OSS & shareware take a look at https://owncloud.org/ https://kolab.org/overview https://www.dropbox.com/install?os=lnx for a start.
I wonder what OS Dropbox's servers run on. And AWS...
"In any case, even Microsoft has admitted that Azure does NOT run on Windows, so if Microsoft isn't doing it, why would anyone else ?"
Azure runs on Hyper-V Server - a dedicated hypervisor layer similar to VMware ESXi. Hyper-V currently has about 30% of the commercial hypervisor market, and is completely free for the fully featured version. Windows is not required, but Hyper-V can be installed as part of a Windows OS if preferred.
(As compared to Linux virtualisation where as far as am aware, you can only run a hypervisor as a bolt on to the full Linux OS)
"Just install Linux Mint. Simples!"
TIFTFY.
Your second sentence is utter tripe. Not least an OS shouldn't ever 'support cloud storage' - it's the OS, not the desktop environment. See here: https://www.google.co.uk/?q=define:+operating+system
The moment you start bundling 'cloud storage support' and other rubbish into the OS, you've got crapware.
"Not least an OS shouldn't ever 'support cloud storage'"
It depends what you mean by "support" and, indeed, "cloud storage".
In a lot of cases the latter just means some form of remote synchronisation. ownCloud and Kolab are both OSS S/W which provide Linux clients for this and Dropbox is one of several commercial products which do the same. As the OS supports these clients then it's reasonable to describe it as supporting this style of cloud storage as a client in the same way as saying it supports a web browser or an office suite. And don't forget older flavours of syncing such as rsync.
At a more fundamental level of support, and taking "cloud storage" to mean remote storage in general, Linux has both NFS and CIFS available at kernel level which can let a client integrate remote file systems directly into its own tree.
Looking at it from the other side any Linux system can be set up to offer ownCloud, Kolab, NFS and/or CIFS as a service. I wouldn't be surprised if the Dropbox service was also running on top of Linux - in fact I'd be surprised to hear that it wasn't. Linux can also host VMs and containers to provide other cloud services.
The OP's claim was complete nonsense typical of the once common but now almost silent crowd of Microsoft boosters.
The simples setup for the likes of you (Troll):
Put two large drives on the Linux box, raid them using mdadm, set up SSH (With keys) and open port 22 on your router, add some DynDNS service... stir, enjoy your instant cloud storage.
Or install OpenCloud if you prefer a gui-like thing f***er.
1. Company gives away storage for free
2. Couple of people figure out a way to abuse the system / technology ("Awesome, I can store 75TB online at absolutely no cost to me..... Im sure no one else has to pay for this, right?")
3. Company adjust policy to close loophole
4. Community loses their shit, demanding more free stuff.
For earlier examples, see:
- Online Backup
- DSL Broadband packages
- 0% Interest credit cards with no fee
Company adjust policy to close loophole
Adjusting policy would be to stop using the word 'unlimited' wrongly and replace it with 'up to', good policy would be not to punish existing users for the piss take of the few.
At the moment I have 40 GBs of Onedrive, 10GBs loyalty (my email address is still hotmail), 15GBs photo's & 15GBs email - I guess (plus whatever on an O365 work account which I don't use). I barely use 3GBs in total so in truth it won't even affect me adversely, but if they take my 'loyalty' reward away then out goes my trust in them as a company to keep their word. If I ever do need a cloudy business solution I will look at Google or Amazon (probably Amazon as Google seems to also have constant changes of mind, almost on a whim).
Good business mantra: The customer is always right!
If the small print says all the promotions you have will stay, what is all the fuss about?
If you were given stuff (I was given 25GB (15 + 10 loyalty I think) + 15GB (Camera roll) + 200GB (Surface purchase- two years), then you get to keep it (at least as long as they said).
I presume the 'unlimited' wasn't a promotion per se. I am surprised there wasn't small print at the time along the usual lines of "Fair use policy applies", the same as so-called unlimited broadband. Albeit a bit different since the storage stays there and MS have to keeps multiple copies of vast quantities of data.
I suppose they could technically keep their word and put the enormous data on tape/disc in archives with slow retrieval (at least latency-wise, it would still keep up with most peoples' DL speeds).
The thing is, you can have it both ways, OneDrive is just a directory. If you PC has a HDD or larger SSD then all of your OneDrive is also on your disc (or vice-versa) and File History or good old backup makes a regular copy to an external hard drive. File History has the added benefit of keeping all the versions of changed files, albeit without the elegance of a version control system.
So, there are three copies if you count the OneDrive as a copy. You can access files elsewhere if you have a connection, all of them since you do not know if you might need that picture or spreadsheet (or just want rather than need) but while maintaining total ownership and control of a real copy locally.
And, as an added bonus, those people with lots of photos get the added ability to search them by tags. I was looking for a photo of a piece of paper I took a some stage and clicked on the 'text' tag, which reduced the photo count to a reasonable eyeball search.
Furthermore, any text itself is searchable (a pub name for example or a museum pic with a description plate or a car number plate).
You can also present the photos such that they are separated by location as well as time which can be useful too.
Finally, you can search for 'car', 'house' or 'people' and similar generic terms and it will find pictures with those items in them, pretty well from my experience. This even works on the phone which is by far the most useful reason to have it since scrolling and searching massive photo collections can be a pain. I do create folders etc. myself but it is surprisingly easy to not bother - I do it mainly to share.
As for sharing, any arbitrary search result or manual selection can be shared as is. Even if the photos are subsequently moved or renamed, they stay shared.
These are all things which a straight backup cannot do although I suppose there may be apps they will not be as easy to use for sure since I can take a picture, it uploads automatically, it is tagged and searched for text without any effort at all from me and can be shared trivially - the data I send is a link, they download it from the servers.
If you share via the server you must run one to do so, then your upload capability is supplying that bandwidth, especially if it is a popular video. You also have to maintain the share system, knowing who has what etc. So what you probably do is actually have a service you use to share, dropbox etc. You copy the files required to that place as required and share afterward just like normal cloud users.
I have never liked the thought of using "the cloud". Especially as my ONLY source of backup.
Between photos and home movies I have over 400gb of data. Plus all the other stuff I want to store. My outlook files are over 2gb..
I have had a NAS drive for two years (2 bay) and I have replaced it recently with a 4bay drive. This provides some redundancy (Raid 5 anyone) and the data is available to anyone at home. I can also access it away from home (A home cloud)
Being at the mercy (No other way of describing it) of a cloud provider who can increase the cost, reduce the storaged amount or remove the service at any time is NOT my idea of secure. And managing large amounts of data over the internet are never a good idea anyway (asymetic data).
My backups are all local, I treasure my Photos and have three seperate copies of them. as they can NEVER be replaced.
@Tony Paulazzo
"Good business mantra: The customer is always right!"
Nope, the customer is nearly never right and often they lie to try and get you to give them, free replacements, service they have not paid for etc.
However it is often good business to let them think they have got something for nothing out of you, or have pulled the wool over your eyes; call me a cynic, if you must :-)
If MSFT had announced a 1TB cap for office subscribers with options for higher capacity there wouldn't be as much fuss. Its announcing the reductions in the free service at the same time as if the 75TB users had anything at all to do with the free service that is so foolish. A case study for how to poison a brand that cost billions to build.
Unlimited - "not limited or restricted in terms of number, quantity, or extent."
So pedantically, if are using only 75TB of unlimited, then by definition you still have an unlimited amount of space available, those using 1G are using the same percentage as those using 75TB.
In the real world of course that's clearly nonsense, but on planet Marketing, Maths and English skills seem entirely optional.
I recall a Barclay's bank marketing advisor insisting that having two loans at 6% interest was the same as having one at 12%, so their consolidation deal at 8% was better, despite having a worked example shown to them.
For me personally, it's a matter of trust. I can't help wondering what else they will change given the chance. I have a single Office 2016 license purchased through my employer. It was nice to have more, but I'll live.
I've been around long enough to remember the kind of *** that MS used to pull when they could get away with it. I've also never forgiven them over Technet Plus. I'm sick and tired of making a personal investment of time and money in MS products just to be ****ed over on a whim.
The only thing I can do is vote with my wallet. I also made it very clear why I was closing my account.
Probably some executives at MS thought they were still enjoying the near-monopoly of old. News: they don't, at least as far as cloud and mobile is concerned. Unlike with the Windows desktop OS, jumping ship to an alternate cloud provider (or just back to local storage) is easy.
What I find peculiar is the attempt to blame a handful of over-enthusiastic people whose only error was to believe that unlimited meant what it said.
I don't use any form of cloud storage for anything at all important. I was quite pleased with the idea of unlimited storage as part of office 365, as a sensible admission of the obvious, but have actually used (checks up) around 2Mb of it so far.
But without actually causing me any harm at all M$ have completely undermine my recently recovered trust in them, W10, and Office, as sensible ways to use a computer. It has taken me many years to be comfortable using them again, and after a few months they have kicked me firmly in the bollocks.
I have alternatives.
Some of you seem surprised by this?
This is Microsoft's normal policy of offering something low cost then either discontinuing it in favor of another higher cost product or just adding %% to the cost. and talking up currency movements. You don't think the free W10 with could tried in everywhere is core to this strategy?
Open you eyes for deity's sake.
I haven't followed this too much but I do recall the blurb at one point saying something like:
This is the last Windows version.
Any time you 'buy' Windows (or get it free, or have an OEM copy on a laptop), it will be updated with new features and bug fixes from time to time.
At some point this will stop happening and you will then have the option to 'buy' the new 'version' (and its subsequent updates).
So, just like Windows of old, you buy Windows 7, it gets service packs and then they stop, you get only security updates, then they stop too.
How they will frame the 'Your system is old, no more updates unless you give us more money' I do not know.
It is also entirely possible (and reasonable) for them to offer 'updates for ever, just pay 3.99/month'. This happens with cars ('You'll not own the car!'). Personally, I find car rental crazy but I see an awful lot of it.
I will be the same with Windows, I have never bought a real copy, always gotten the OEM version with new hardware, five years or so for each iteration of a new laptop.
In about five years, they may stop supporting this Windows 10, I will stay with the 'version' it has then or buy a new computer, just like always.
If five years turns into one year (or two even), then I will start to be annoyed.
OK, I won't gloat too much.
I've often stated my opposition to clouds, even in the face of vehement opposition (one of my comments from last month on this subject was downvoted quite a bit due to my oversimplification of what clouds actually are) but yet again we see that clouds have their limits.
There's no such thing as "unlimited". Everything has a limit somewhere. Consider that a lot of the reason behind terms such as "cloud storage", "unlimited" and "free" are used by marketing types to sucker in those people who like the idea of getting something for as near to nothing as can possibly be achieved. The term "bait and switch" has been used by quite a few people and it's nothing to be surprised at.
The server farms they use to provide these clouds may be huge but at the end of the day they are just a bunch of clustered servers with lots of storage and that has a limit. If anyone is surprised at what Microsoft are doing, then they really need to get a clue.
But while I have always stated that I shall never use a cloud for anything unless I know that I can trust the provider with its security, putting my files at the mercy of a company that will suddenly change the conditions of storage purely because somebody else is taking the piss or, as it seems here, the company didn't plan its capacity properly (any ITIL folk here will know what I mean) isn't going to happen.
"Nor is it clear why a few busy Office 365 customers necessitate such severe changes to the free offering for users in general."
Obviously, Microsoft ran out of the needed fairy dust and unicorn farts to make their "all you can eat for free" storage model work. But it's understandable they were caught out by this, since they weren't around back in 2000 when the initial Internet bubble went "pop". Those were the bad old days when Internet sites started to realize they needed to make a profit at some point, and they were spending a pantload of money on high-end server hardware and connectivity. Nope, Microsoft didn't live through any of that, so there's no way they could have known it wouldn't work this time either...
So, the rapacious, greed-ridden, ribbon-laden monstrosity that is Micro$oft lays aside its sheep guise and reveals for all and sundry its true nature.
First Secure Audio Path, and Protected Media Path, accompanied by unlimited DRM snuffling.
Next the BigBrother-ish monitoring afforded by the X-Box and all its associated ills and ilk.
Next Twisted-Sister Vista, with all its new monitoring and data snaffing, not to mention the accompanying strangulation-ribbon being added to the office suite.
Then, Windows7 with a considerably-less-entertaining-than-ET phone home fetish.
Finally (erm, probably not), Windoze 10 with its various lockdowns (UEFI, AMT, ring -2, PMP, HDCP, SecureBoot, TPM, etc., etc.) and incessant, interminable, intrusive telemetry.
M$, you're a shill for Hollywierd, the TLAs worldwide, and the computing industry's answer to Shelob the spider.
Isn't it about time you went back to your roots and did something useful for a change?
Many years ago there was a radio commercial for something-or-other that had one fellow reciting a mantra "Pay more, get less". That was really funny.
What you are doing, isn't.
I suspect this is yet another cheap support for Nadella. Why the hell do you say its Microsoft's mistake? Its Nadella who claimed to be cloud-first, mobile-first rubbish and now you don't have any sense even to call him out for this. Westerners would pimp out any indian garbage as its a pro at that.
That won't work for a long time, so count your days. This is carefully written in a way as though to criticize but actually to protect nadella and blame any and all failures on Microsoft. If there is any auccess , am sure the same sheep flock would 'praise' nadella. Disgusting.
The internet and the cloud is about content. Content is the blood in the veins of the internet. Why should there be millions of copies of the same data?
If you have videos that are not pirated, then post them to YouTube and earn some money.
If you have music or audio then get on-board with iTunes, YouTube or the many others promoting audio content and make some money.
Would you put everyone's else's photos in your photo album's at home? Would you play someone else's video during a family union? So why are you storing someone other's content?
HATs off to MS for not participating in the pirating of content and pushing people to the most appropriate way of managing digital content.
Most importantly, if you are a content consumer, then you shouldn't be storing copyright data. Then you shouldn't be saving other's data.
If you want to be a digital pack rat or a thief then go and buy an external hard drive.
MS and other online storage providers gives you plenty of space for legal and ethical activities.
Sorry pirates, no treasure here.
Personally, I am intelligent enough and experienced enough to NOT want cloud storage.
I don't want my critical items floating through the air where any hacker can snatch them if they get lucky enough to do so. HELLO, you've read how credit card readers by walk-by crooks lift the CC's information from the card you are using for a second so they can later use your money for their own personal pleasure, haven't you? So, why would anyone be okay with bank number, friends lists, job information, your family's photos flying through the air?
That is the least of why I hate the Cloud. Besides it being a playing field for hackers to steal money, identity, set up all sort of illegal activities (rape, spying, kidnapping, future criminal plans of learning delicate company information, etc) it is also the stealer of personal files from your own computer because it 1] it always reverts to holding everything hostage on its server (making it time consuming to downing everything back into the computer at once quickly and efficiently) should you need a reformat, and 2] it is related to a washer and dryer which swallows up one sock at a time. Files go missing for no reason - they just disappear, kaput.
I have tried to rid my computer of iCloud but it keeps coming back and sneaking its way in despite the fact that I am too intelligent to keep full account numbers in my Quicken, nor do I download from my back, not do I keep any other financial items within my computer. Occasionally I may order from a reliable online source, but I never keep CC numbers on their site - I'd rather enter it each time, or else it is linked with my secondary bank account that has less than $50.00 in it at any given time.
So, please ---- KILL iCLOUD and make computing easier for all of us! After all, who needs to save all that garbage people collect, because you can't take it with you when you die anyway. (tic)
"wrecked its cloud strategy"
Absolutely wrong. "Perfected its cloud strategy" would be better
Microsoft policy of "Cloud first, Mobile first" gives the game away if the "Windows 10 everywhere" policy is also considered. Microsoft can't charge (or at least not significantly) for Windows on mobile as that would force the cost of the phone too high. As in theory both phones and PCs will be running the same OS, realistically Microsoft then can't charge for the PC operating system - at least not for OEM builds.
As customer devices become smaller, cheaper (tablets, phones) and effectively disposable media viewing devices, charging licence fees per device becomes unviable.
So they HAVE to make their money elsewhere, and storage is the only realistic option.
In effect, Microsoft are changing their charging model from a per-client basis, to a per-server basis......and as multiple clients can access one "server" (in the sense that one online storage account is a personal server) then for many users it could work out as a fairer way to do things. The alternative is paying a £100 windows licence for every PC/phone/tablet you own.
Expect the next stage to be that manufacturers are offered free OEM Windows licences for ALL cloud-enabled devices.
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