greg hughes - dot net

Microsoft's Windows Live Folders (Beta) is (another) service that allows you to upload your files to a secure, remote, backed-up, high-availability server system so you can access them from anywhere on the Internet with a web browser and your Windows Live ID account information. It's a pretty basic service, but it's clean and functional and that counts. You only get 500MB of storage (did I just say "only??"), so it's not (yet) a place to back up your entire hard drive or even a large number of pictures or other binary files, and there is a 50MB per-file limit. The service is currently in a limited release while it's in beta, but you can sign up and get in at some point.

You can store files in one of three ways:

• So only you can access them (personal files and folders)
• So only those you specify can access them (shared files and folders)
• So anyone can access them (public files and folders)

Below are a few screenshots. When you first log in and see your new account, you have 500MB of free space available. The graphical representation of the system functionality is nice and clean and very easy to understand. Anyone could use this stuff, it's plenty intuitive:

Once you choose how you want to store your files (in this case I chose Personal folders), you're presented with the opportunity to create or choose folders to store them in:

Then you can choose, as expected, which files you want to upload using a standard Browse dialog (below). It would be nice to have a tool I could run to choose a whole directory, or multiple files in a single dialog, or even that I could just drag-and-drop onto. Maybe someone else will write one (or already has for all I know).

Once you upload your file, the details page for the document (file) can be seen and reviewed. Options exist to rename, delete, etc:

All in all it's a good start. I am hopeful that larger storage and bulk upload tools will become available. If that happens, this will be a viable contender in the online storage market. But hey, it's beta and it's free, so it's hard to complain. :)