Pros and Cons of Online File Storage

Would you use online storage at work? These sites are becoming popular and many are free services too. However the big question is that is it worth using these sites? Are your details safe? Let’s look at some of the popular online storage external providers:

Google Online Storage

With the online storage system of Google it wants to take care of your life. This also includes Google Drive. With the combination of Gmail and Google drive it is possible to have office which runs on net only. This however has its share of good and bad. One of the major merits is that the files can be accessed from anywhere whether you use a mobile phone or a computer. Google Drive allows installation of applications. Despite having a quick internet connection, these applications are slow and not meant for professional use. Google Drive even permits to upload entire hard disk and allows viewing as well as editing some files if the application installed is proper.  Gmail stores images and files. This should be used for communication only. Google Drive should look after file storage.

Zoho

Zoho offers a complete office solution for a business for databases, spreadsheet and so on. Basic editing can be done. All business can be done online but files cannot be made with each other. This is best for basic business as well as university students. You would have several utilities like chats, meetings, note and everything that a desktop computer has. Some among these are not free and they would have to be upgraded. 

Dropbox

Dropbox provides good sharing and syncing facilities between computers. If a document is edited and the same is done by your friend too, when uploaded to drop box there would be trouble and it would be overwritten through the automatic sync. Google drive is better here.

Skydrive, Office 365 and Hotmail 

MS started initially with live storage which saved files. Thereafter it upgraded to Mesh which failed. Then it updated to Office 365 and now Skydrive. This is not suggested for online business. Google Drive is competent universally. 

Yahoo Mail

This has no online storage solution other than Yahoo mail that has limited space. Therefore files can be uploaded to inbox and saved later. Here the files are not encrypted in the server. It does not have free POP3. This is not reliable as far as speed is concerned. You would have to download all one by one in order to access them.   

There are several merits and demerits as far as working with online tools are concerned. However several experts and users based on their experience say that desktop is better as far as speed, reliability and such factors are concerned. The cloud needs to catch up and till users use optic fiber, cloud cannot defeat desktop.