Onedrive storage down to 5GB from 15 + 15GB

[Angry_Mushroom]

Well. I guess it's time to buy an SD card and start manually uploading my photos via USB. No huge deal since I tend to use OneDrive almost exclusively for word docs. Still kinda sucks they're taking away the 30 gigs of free storage from previous users. It's not like I can abuse 30 gigs.

 

[CygnusOrion]

I bet Microsoft realizes how bad they ****ed up with this and comes back with a tiered-approach on Friday.

 

[Chintan Gohel]

Well it should be much cheaper.

Cloud is more flexible, reachable and safe; it works automatically that's why people love it. Just sayng!

I think for the majority of lumia users worldwide, flash storage or pc storage is more accessible than cloud storage. Internet isn't available everywhere all the time you know. I have to go hunting for wifi so I can update my pc and phone every week.

 

[kmalone43]

For everyone complaining about losing their 15-30 free GBs, wah. It's $2 a month or get it for further for free for an entire year when checking out office 365. This is an industry norm and a service that you should have not been expecting to get for free your entire life considering the quality of the application.

 

[Penny_1]

For everyone complaining about losing their 15-30 free GBs, wah. It's $2 a month or get it for further for free for an entire year when checking out office 365. This is an industry norm and a service that you should have not been expecting to get for free your entire life considering the quality of the application.

This is not about the money. Can everybody on this forum afford the $2 per month for additional storage? I would venture to guess yes.

This is about Microsoft's continuing tradition of ineptitude. OneDrive was one of the most solid features across Windows devices. It is probably the best example of what a universal platform could mean on Windows. It drove usage by being both extremely convenient and extremely accessible. This move makes it far less convenient, and slightly less accessible. What this change means to me, as a user, is that I can no longer sync my pertinent documents and photos to the cloud in a worry-free manner.

I'm not the biggest user at about 15GB used so far, but I've been a long time Windows Phone and Windows user who has a ton of documents and the camera rolls from all of my WP devices on it. You know who this affecting most? Regular Windows and Windows Phone users who actually relied on OneDrive for this type of syncing and cloud storage accessibility. You know who it affects least? People who want to store masses of data in the cloud, and would likely be willing to jump to any cloud storage solution that offers the space.

So Microsoft's statement in all of this is that they are doing this because the latter type of user was abusing the unlimited storage. But what they are really doing is enraging Windows Phone, Windows 8, and Windows 10 users above all else -- their most supportive customers.

There is no way to paint this announcement in a good light. It was simply one of the stupidest things they could do as a company. My trust issues with Microsoft are not about data and utility; they are about Microsoft's continued ineptitude.

 

[a5cent]

This is not about the money. Can everybody on this forum afford the $2 per month for additional storage? I would venture to guess yes.

This is about Microsoft's continuing tradition of ineptitude. OneDrive was one of the most solid features across Windows devices.

Up until now, it was MS' marketing department that payed for the bandwidth, the online storage, and their geographically distributed replication and failover infrastructure that ensures our data remains safe and accessible.

The fact that we're now being asked to pitch in doesn't make OneDrive any less solid. OneDrive is still just as solid as it ever was. Since we can all afford $2 it's also just as accessible, and then possibly even more useful, as that gets us 3x the online storage.

The galling part is only in how the changes were communicated. Nobody believes the changes are being made because of a few abuses. This was (unsurprisingly) always the plan. They should just have been honest and stated that OneDrive's success and rapid growth can no longer be financed purely as a promotional effort, and that they hope those who use it extensively will be willing to pitch in their fair share.

I agree that MS should probably not have changed the quotas for those using the online camera roll, at least not for Lumia users. It seems that's an area where they need more promotional efforts, not less, but that's a different topic.

 

[Sagar Limaye]

This is not about the money. Can everybody on this forum afford the $2 per month for additional storage? I would venture to guess yes.

This is about Microsoft's continuing tradition of ineptitude. ent documents and photos to the cloud in a worry-free manner.

Spot on.

I'm going to tell everyone who I convinced to start using OneDrive to switch. I'm never defending Microsoft's services again.

I'm uninstalling my insider build as a sign of protest.

 

[Arunabha Goswami]

MS logic - if we continue to provide free users with 30GB storage, people with unlimited storage will abuse the system.

What do you say to something like that?

 

[Great deal]

The moment they try to charge any sort of subscription for Windows 10 after saying "it's free, forever" is the moment they'll simply shoot Windows in the head and give an immense boost to OS X, ChromeOS (which I am betting by then will be unified with Android, despite Google's current denial), Linux and Pirated versions of Windows.
I have a Windows 7 and Windows 8 disk. One of the advantages Windows 10 offered me that Windows 7 didn't was the integration with OneDrive. But since OneDrive will become - come 2016 and unless they reverse this - useless, the appeal of Windows 10 to me is basically gone. If they try to charge me for it I'll simply pick up the Windows 7 disk, format the PC and go back to Windows 7.

As for cloud solutions, I'm currently moving everything to Google Drive (which, what do you know, just offered me 100GB extra for 2 years when I opened their Android app which I had never done since moving to Android because I kept using OneDrive) and I'll just get myself a WD My Cloud, set up a personal cloud and be done with it.
And honestly, even if Microsoft reverses these decisions, my confidence is already broken. I won't use OneDrive as my main cloud solution ever again because I simply don't trust Microsoft anymore to upheld their part of the bargain. Now they say Office 365 users will still get 1TB...but who's to tell me that in 6 months they won't change their minds and reduce that to 500GB?

This! - Its all about trust. People configure thier systems for the lives they live. Onedrive is a central digital cog in peoples machines and the mere fact they can renege and change the size of the cog means a lot of inconvenience to people, also to never trust the company that did it.

 

[Chintan Gohel]

Here's an interesting scenario that happened in my university last year.

Our university and every other university in Kenya has google apps for education (GAFE). We get email, drive, calendar, docs, groups and other apps for free as student users. The added benefit was, initially we were getting 25GB drive storage which got bumped to unlimited storage. I mean truly unlimited storage. This was done worldwide for all GAFE accounts in all universities where Google apps are being used for education.

When did Google change from 25GB to unlimited? Around the same time Onedrive offered unlimited storage for office 365 users (which was actually reserve 10TB and get more later)

Now as far as I know, GAFE accounts are still having unlimited storage while office 365 users have 1TB. The difference in this case is that in my university, when you leave the college, your google email and services still work. But the office 365 for students account expires the moment you leave the college. So who has the better offer?

The only reason I don't use Google drive is because it cannot recognise that I'm uploading the same file again and hence will keep multiple copies of my files. This is a very irritating issue and I cannot have several copies of all my photos. Hence my being one onedrive

 

[Paolo Ferrazza]

I think for the majority of lumia users worldwide, flash storage or pc storage is more accessible than cloud storage. Internet isn't available everywhere all the time you know. I have to go hunting for wifi so I can update my pc and phone every week.

Yeah sorry I was talking in a first world perspective I understand that it does not apply to everyone.

 

[N_LaRUE]

The moment they try to charge any sort of subscription for Windows 10 after saying "it's free, forever" is the moment they'll simply shoot Windows in the head and give an immense boost to OS X, ChromeOS (which I am betting by then will be unified with Android, despite Google's current denial), Linux and Pirated versions of Windows.

I don't recall MS ever saying that Windows was going to be 'free forever' find me that in writing from MS and I'll believe you.

They said Windows was free for the first year. That was all. I have little doubt that Windows will become a subscription service like most other software these days. It's pretty obvious in all their statements about how W10 is the 'last Windows release' and that there will be 'constant updates to the existing OS'.

The question will be how much will it cost for the subscription. Hopefully less than Office 365. If it's a reasonable price most people won't have an issue paying for it. It will only become problematic if it's overpriced.

I personally think a Office 365 subscription is good value for what you get. With Windows they're fairly lucky to have such a large install base and a large catalogue of software so I don't see it being an issue so long as the price is reasonable.

If people are going to think things are free all the time why would companies bother making software? MS is a software company. This is what they do and how they make money. Do we really expect differently?

As for this whole OneDrive thing I'm rather thankful I switched to Android and haven't used it as much as I did when using WP. I rarely use it with my PC. Though I understand they need to make OneDrive more profitable I think they way they went about this whole thing was wrong. Great way to lose customer base and confidence in people

I mentioned elsewhere and this goes out to any company. Don't use the term 'unlimited' if you don't mean it. Advertising watchdogs should fine companies that do this if you ask me.

 

[Chintan Gohel]

For everyone complaining about losing their 15-30 free GBs, wah. It's $2 a month or get it for further for free for an entire year when checking out office 365. This is an industry norm and a service that you should have not been expecting to get for free your entire life considering the quality of the application.

It's 2USD a month. To you it doesn't seem a lot but for majority of users in other countries, this is a lot. People save for months to buy their first smartphone and after that initial investment, they are wary of spending money for more services. Take my class for example, 40+ university students and I think only 2 people have ever paid for apps or services online. Very few know even how to pay for services online.

This is replicated across all the classes which is about 15000 students. I bet only 2% will actually pay for any service, whether it is an app or premium service or onedrive in this case. Why? Because they will not spend 24USD a year for something they can just get for free elsewhere or on hard drives. I know a friend who had a large photo collection of large photos (40MB each) and what he did was open multiple onedrive accounts so he can upload his photos. One account for every 3 months.

In college, people will go for free antivirus, free editing apps like photoscape or any video converter, free media players like vlc, free os like ubuntu, and now free online storage like google drive. People would rather change their SIM card rather than pay for extended use of whatsapp. Do you think they would pay for extra storage? Or office 365? I seriously doubt it

 

[Paolo Ferrazza]

It's 2USD a month. To you it doesn't seem a lot but for majority of users in other countries, this is a lot. People save for months to buy their first smartphone and after that initial investment, they are wary of spending money for more services. Take my class for example, 40+ university students and I think only 2 people have ever paid for apps or services online. Very few know even how to pay for services online.

This is replicated across all the classes which is about 15000 students. I bet only 2% will actually pay for any service, whether it is an app or premium service or onedrive in this case. Why? Because they will not spend 24USD a year for something they can just get for free elsewhere or on hard drives. I know a friend who had a large photo collection of large photos (40MB each) and what he did was open multiple onedrive accounts so he can upload his photos. One account for every 3 months.

In college, people will go for free antivirus, free editing apps like photoscape or any video converter, free media players like vlc, free os like ubuntu, and now free online storage like google drive. People would rather change their SIM card rather than pay for extended use of whatsapp. Do you think they would pay for extra storage? Or office 365? I seriously doubt it

Well actually if in your country you do not have easy internet access then, well, maybe cloud storage really is not a product for you and you should stay on local storage till you country advances a bit more. I mean it looks like you are complaining about something that is not even useful to you.

 

[Chintan Gohel]

Well actually if in your country you do not have easy internet access then, well, maybe cloud storage really is not a product for you and you should stay on local storage till you country advances a bit more. I mean it looks like you are complaining about something that is not even useful to you.

You're right, internet access is difficult and expensive.

cloud storage is supposed to be the second backup after local storage. There's a possibility of thumb drives crashing and thefefore you have an online backup in case your phone gets stolen or pc gets fried.

Your solution kind of makes sense, to use local physical storage but then wouldn't MS lose a lot of present and future customers? MS needs to get a strong market share and it can only do that when it looks at all markets, developing and developed. I can tell you that right now lumia is 5 times more popular than iphone in my country. For every 100 smartphone users I see, at least 20 have lumias while less than 4 have iphones. Others have samsung and tecno and lg and whatnot.

Apple is weak in developing markets because of it's restrictive and expensive services and products. If MS starts cutting down on services and charging for them, then public perception will change a lot. People would move away from MS thinking it's an expensive platform to be on. MS could potentially lose a lot of the developing market share.

 

[galbenush]

OneDrive: OneDrive.com (802 ideas) ? Feature Suggestions for Microsoft OneDrive - go and upvote !!!

 

[Chintan Gohel]

OneDrive: OneDrive.com (802 ideas) ? Feature Suggestions for Microsoft OneDrive - go and upvote !!!

Done, thank you for the link

 

[HoosierDaddy]

The galling part is only in how the changes were communicated. Nobody believes the changes are being made because of a few abuses.

Exactly. They might as well have blamed it on an offensive YouTube video.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

OneDrive: OneDrive.com (802 ideas) ? Feature Suggestions for Microsoft OneDrive - go and upvote !!!

Done. Almost forgot user voice is ending in the next few weeks and unused votes go in the toilet. So gave it 3 votes.

 

[triageatdawn]

Guys don't forget to check out this petition, it's almost at 2K signatures. We need all the support we can get at this point.

https://www.change.org/p/microsoft-give-onedrive-users-back-their-storage-options

Make sure to share the link afterwards and spread the word as much as you can. Cheers!