jason8612

I found a few sites that seem to offer cloud computing, but with a OS. One is icloud (icloud.com) which I'm currently trying out. It's free (3gb so 1 more gb than dropbox) and it looks like a windows (or linux) OS where you can install their free software (write for word docs, sheet for excel, etc).
Looks quite interesting as you can watch movies and browse the web in that. Plus it has the social media, mail and other features. Could also be a more secure way to do private data when using public wifi

not sure if there are other options out there, but something where I can access my files from anywhere without having my server on and making it easy to keep sync is nice.

Flahusky

Amazon EC2(Elastic Computing)
Read up on their offerings, basically a free* cloud PC(linux or Win) with 10 or 15 gig of storage and data.
*Free for the time being as are most things it seems now a days. Micro instances only

cordelli

If you are using windows, Mesh from Microsoft will sync the files for you. I believe they are keeping it at 5 GB of storage.

It will allow remote access to any of your machines it's running on, and you can set up folders that stay in sync with each other. You can also drop files and get files from machines you don't have it installed on. If you add a file, it will sync to your computers.

If all you want if file sync and storage, that may work for you.

Efrem

If you do computing, on the cloud or anywhere else, you're using a computer. If you use a computer, there's an OS. The questions you have to ask are (a) can you live with their OS, and (b) does it offer the features you need?

If all you want is file storage with access from anywhere, the OS should be pretty much invisible. You care about the interface to their storage. It's probably designed to be easy to use and to work with any OS you use on your own computers. If you ever want to do anything else, the OS (and the system software they put on top of the underlying OS) will matter a lot. If that's a possibility, I'd suggest you think a bit about your needs down the road.

KoKoBuddy

"Cloud" computing is OS independent. If you have to download anything to use it, then it is not cloud computing. When you use gmail or hotmail or when you go to flytertalk, you're using cloud technology. Doesn't matter if you you're using windows, mac, linux or whatever. There is nothing to download either.

Personally I don't see the point of web based file storage. Flash drives are so cheap these days. For $100 you can get 64GB of storage.

jason8612

Thanks
I see everyones point
I like web based storage as many times I forget my flash drive.
In terms of just a simple file storage vs a OS, I am fine with the file storage now, but there might be certain spots (traveling and using internet cafes) that they might have things locked down that it could come in handy.

JClishe

Personally I don't see the point of flash drives. Cloud computing is so cheap these days. For $0 you can get 25GB of storage (Skydrive)

cordelli

I never fully got the carry all my files around on a flash drive thing when I can do it pretty much seamless using web based storage, and have been doing so for years and years without a problem. I save something on my hard drive. It gets saved on all my other synched computers.

The only time it doesn't make sense is when the machine I'm working with won't be online before I get to one of the others so it won't synch, but other times saving and moving a flash drive around is just extra steps.

If I don't have the flash drive, too bad no files. I can access my files on web based storage from any machine connected to the internet.

ByrdluvsAWACO

Because web-based storage can't get left on a plane, in a hotel, on the back seat of cab, or on your desk in LA while you're sitting in London.

jason8612

yup.
The issue really come in if you have internet access or not.
For me when I'm on the ground I always have internet. Be it at home with my cable modem and wireless/wired network, or on the road with my android phone (3g mobile hotspot) or my data sim and portable battery powered UMTS router or my netbook that has built in UMTS. For files I use every day, it's just easier to do it via the web as everything gets synced.
But for large files, videos, etc the flash drive is just more practical. faster than online syncing (I mean like 1gb+ files) and also less internet use (for the limited mobile providers).
It depends on what you are doing, but web based syncing seems to be quite good and with so many options (dropbox, sky drive, etc) it's nice and easy

KoKoBuddy

If we get to the point where high speed internet access is available 99.99% of the time in 99.99% of the world, I'll switch. Until then, I'll keep the trusty hardware solution.

GadgetFreak

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

I use Dropbox. What I really like compared to a flash drive is that my assistant can add stuff to it for me while away and and I can add stuff for her. Plus it syncs with iAnnotate on my iPad. It has made my travel almost completely paperless.

Takire

I still prefer flash drives as in some hotels, wifi isn't available at all.