Digital Home Thoughts: Does Skydrive Compare Favorably To Dropbox In Terms Of Ease Of Use?

"Microsoft's online file storage service, Windows Live SkyDrive, has been a teeth-gnashing flail ever since its introduction. It looks like a bunch of file folders sitting on a hard drive -- but you can't drag and drop files and folders into one another or right click them to copy and paste or do any of the other things you've been able to do in the Windows file system for more than a decade. There's some kind of tie into Office Web Apps, but it's weird and inconsistent -- you can upload files directly from a menu item in Office 2010 apps, but not from earlier versions of Office. You can do some things from the browser, while other features require you to open a desktop Office app."

The idea is enticingly simple: use cloud-based storage to access your files from virtually any Internet-based device. Even if you have never used the Dropbox service, you have probably heard its name, and have an idea what it does. Similarly, you may also have heard of Windows Live Skydrive, but are not completely sure of what it offers. The two products are not identical in functionality (e.g. Dropbox offers file synchronization across devices, while Skydrive does not, although Microsoft offers this functionality in other ways, namely Windows Live Mesh), but they do have some overlap. What makes this article interesting is its description of how the interfaces for the two services compare. If you have used both services, let us know in the comments if you agree with this author's contention that Dropbox is just easier to use.