Onedrive storage down to 5GB from 15 + 15GB

[N_LaRUE]

In the last few days I ran a few experiments with my Google Drive and Google Photos storage just to compare and see how things were working there, and everything works much smoother and faster than on OneDrive. There are some usual Google quirks, but in terms of ease of use and speed it is superior to OneDrive, at least in my limited testing.

Honestly to compare OneDrive and Google Photos is like sour grapes to sweet oranges. With Google Photos it's a smooth transition from one device to another and also having easy access on your web browser is fantastic. Having the photo editing options is nice to though a bit basic. OneDrive simply doesn't compare. I hope MS brings something similar for W10M. As for Google Drive, I find it easier to use than OneDrive and I do find Google Drive faster.

On a WP device OneDrive was ok but using it outside WP it's clunky.

 

[BobLobIaw]

You know, I wonder if Apple did something similar (you know the 'richest' IT company on the planet yet people keep using M$ like they got bottomless pit of money) if there would be this level of abuse...

That's an interesting observation. Considering the issue is one of "trust" for a lot of people here, it seems that MS would have been fine had they just given people 5GB free from the outset like Apple. In that light, people are basically saying they got screwed because MS gave them excessive free storage and then took it away.

 

[a5cent]

That's another issue with OneDrive. When it was free we could put up with a bad product, that has been downgraded recently in terms of performance. However, if you have to pay for it you will search around for the best service. At $7 per month (with OneDrive) you are paying at least $84 per year, so many can easily purchase a 1TB hard drive, or purchase storage on another cloud that works better.

The idea that using OneDrive is comparable to purchasing a 1TB drive has been debunked so many times that I won't do it again.

The bandwidth limitation only matters if you're using OD as cold storage however. It's irrelevant if you're using OD the way MS' product managers intended. I suspect bandwidth throttling was partially introduced for that reason; to discourage OD's use as a backup solution.

If you want/need Office and cloud synching, then Office 365 is an unbeatable offer and a no brainer.

If you use multiple Windows devices and appreciate cloud synching being integrated directly into the Windows OS, then OneDrive is also a no brainer.

Irrespective of anything else, If you want/need cloud based cold storage, then you need something other than or in addition to (no reason to limit yourself to just one service) OneDrive.

For me (as someone with multiple TB of data), that would be a NAS with symform (or similar) based cloud backup. Amazon would be my next choice, as they have solutions specifically targeting backup scenarios.

 

[RJKIII]

They went to alot of effort to attract & teach consumers to expect 'more'.

Now when they renege on 'more' they (and others) impugn the consumers for having unreasonable entitlement issues.

Has anybody ever complained to their car dealer that their new car was not running as expected and accepted the answer that they should be thankful that it even rolls under it own power still and that they're not walking or taking the bus?

And don't explain to me that if the car was 'free'...

Expectations...

 

[920Walker]

The car analogy is bogus. OneDrive is offsite storage. Losing a free parking spot or free satelite radio service would be comparable, but neither are needed to operate the device as intended.

Re: The bandwidth complaints, those speeds would only get worse if they remained free with no incentives for MS to improve the service.

 

[RJKIII]

The car analogy is bogus. OneDrive is offsite storage. Losing a free parking spot or free satelite radio service would be comparable, but neither are needed to operate the device as intended.

Re: The bandwidth complaints, those speeds would only get worse if they remained free with no incentives for MS to improve the service.

Neither is a tune-up needed for the car get down the road, but it's unacceptable nonetheless.

Prius owners were not happy when they were updated (reprogrammed) to extend battery life and their mileage was all shot to hell. All kosher by the fine print, horrible PR.

Honey, I didn't technically cheat on you. We are not formally in a relationship and none of those implied promises I let you believe are in writing.

Expectations are not necessarily facts nor legalities, but they can destroy a company/product anyway.

 

[Great deal]

I read that it was education institutions abusing the system, people videoing lectures and then uploading and folders shared accross campus, so each individual only has to uplaod a few videos and if loads of people are doing this its easy to get to 75TB if not more.

I have to agree there. Like I mentioned a couple of posts back my NAS which is a cloud drive is about the same speed as OneDrive. Some uploads to OneDrive that weren't even that big were painful. I don't know how anyone could store that level data on there. Just connecting to OneDrive is slow sometimes and that's via WiFi.

 

[jbestman]

The car analogy is bogus. OneDrive is offsite storage. Losing a free parking spot or free satelite radio service would be comparable, but neither are needed to operate the device as intended.

Re: The bandwidth complaints, those speeds would only get worse if they remained free with no incentives for MS to improve the service.

If a car dealership sold me a car with the promise of unlimited Satellite radio for the life of the car, and then turn around and take that feature away after I bought the car. Hmmmmm. Interesting scenario. I wonder what I would do?

Maybe, I would pull out my calculator and determine how that was not feasible and how they could not sustain it. Apologize to them for not pointing out the error in the first place. And offer to pay more for less. But, seeing as I do not work for the dealership, I would be universally laughed at. And, justifiably so. Yet, some Stockholm Syndrome'd people here don't see how laughable all their excuses sound.

Microsoft messed up. I know it. You know it. They know it. Stop with the excuses and let's move on.

Next.

 

[lunta]

Dear Microsoft, damn you, you make being a loyal customer a really difficult task and honestly impossible to recommend Windows ecosystem to anyone.

Albeit 5 GB of free storage is definitely enough for word/excel etc. work related projects for normal people, the problem is media, i.e. photos and video. Syncing photos to cloud is the most important thing for mobile devices. My Lumia 1020 creates quite a big files from its 41 Mpix camera. 5 GB free storage is not enough, previously I had 15 GB free, 15 GB camera bonus and 100 GB some other bonus.

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Decreasing the free storage so dramatically means totally killing Windows Phone, permanently, forever. Google has an [/FONT]unlimited [FONT=Arial, sans-serif]storage for photos/videos with a relatively large 16MPix resolution, plus they have that 15 GB free storage for everything else. I just counted that I have about 5 TB of stuff in my free Google profile (mostly photos/videos), but only 2 GB of it counts against quota. That is good.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]If somebody uploaded ~100 TB of stuff to his/her unlimited storage was not his/her fault, unlimited is unlimited. If that doesn't suit you, maybe unlimited could be made limited, but for a gods sake, please do not limit the free storage to that ridiculously small 5 GB, or at least make some special unlimited quota for media, like Google does.[/FONT]

 

[ddabiz]

I find it really interesting that MS is using those with 75+ TB as scapegoats. I mean, they advertised/offered OneDrive with UNLIMITED storage so, why are they at fault? Yes, I think 75 TB is a ridiculous amount of usage for a person but, unless they are storing content that's considered illegal, they are technically not at fault. Even if they were hosting illegal content, MS could pursue those cases individually. Otherwise, it's on MS not on the users.

 

[chris_gt]

So this guys sold us the 930 with 32gb of non expandable storage and told us we had onedrive to cover the deficit, they now do this. 5GB to backup a phone that shoots and uploads 19MP DNG photos and 4k video is like having a 128mb ipod in 2015: USELESS.

 

[Grodelj]

Microsoft is not an online storage company, they made a mistake when they first announced unlimited (same as Amazon have done) No company can sustain unlimited storage, its just not technically or financially feasible. I blame MS for the manner in which this has been dealt with rather than a climbdown on unlimited, I also disagree with the 15 to 5GB - way too small.

Satya is one man in a company with over 150,000 employees and many many suppliers who probably treble that number. He does not make decisions on everything as thier are not enough hours in a day for one man to do so. MS is an old beast on a diet thats been through and still going through a lot of change.

I agree with everything, but such an important decision had to be approved from the leader(s). Unlimited storage is stupid, but using this as an excuse to shrink 15GB to nearly useless 5GB? I would call that moronic PR.
I have 1,33TB of onedrive storage and these changes won't affect my storage (or maybe -15GB for camera roll), but what moves can we expect next? How could I now recommend someone to switch and come to WP, when I don't know what kind of a ****ty move will be made tomorrow?

 

[adamjoshuhill]

That is scary and ironic - Making W10 free. Like you said Microsoft made it free because they knew people wouldn't pay for it, people would just pirate it but Microsoft hoped that they would get the money back from a cut in the app sales in their store... What? The people that Microsoft believes won't spend on and OS update will now all of a sudden spend money on apps?!? (and a lot to cover the approx $100 for the OS) Microsoft public push for 1 Billion as good and admirable but what happens after they reach that target and they're left with a 5 billion depth because no one spent any money on apps? We all know now with One Drive that they're are comfortable with give and take, they have to make money after all

 

[HoosierDaddy]

That is scary and ironic - Making W10 free. Like you said Microsoft made it free because they knew people wouldn't pay for it, people would just pirate it but Microsoft hoped that they would get the money back from a cut in the app sales in their store... What? The people that Microsoft believes won't spend on and OS update will now all of a sudden spend money on apps?!?

I'm pretty sure they made it free because the competition is free. And they know many W10 users won't buy much if any from the app store.

 

[adamjoshuhill]

We tried to kill this myth about 'storage is cheap' nonsense back a few pages. So let me try again.

Storage may be cheap for you as a individual but data centres are not cheap. The data centre drives are about 2-3 times more expensive than your portable drive. Then there's the data centre itself, which means building, HVAC, maintenance and all associated equipment for a data centre. Then there's typical bills to go with all that.

I'm not forgiving MS for this blunder but I'm just pointing out that things are not as 'cheap' as you make it out.

If you want a cheap cloud drive with 1-4TB of storage for home then buy one. That's what I did. Honestly, my cloud drive is about the same speed as OneDrive.

But we as the customers shouldn't/don't care how hard it is to provide that service, it's not our problem. When Verizon delays an update to your phone because they have to take time and effort to make sure the update won't screw up your phone does anyone care? Verizon still has to pay someone to look through the code and test it on all their phones (and sometimes come to to the conclusion that the effort isn't worth it to keep updating the phone) but does anyone sympathise with them? No

If well all knew that the unlimited offer was unrealistic then how could Microsoft with all their highly paid experts not realise it to?

If a company cannot support a product, then don't sell that product

 

[adamjoshuhill]

I'm pretty sure they made it free because the competition is free. And they know many W10 users won't buy much if any from the app store.

So who's gonna pay for the development of W10?

 

[Great deal]

Windows 10 is free so that they can get the people using Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1 to switch...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems

That is scary and ironic - Making W10 free. Like you said Microsoft made it free because they knew people wouldn't pay for it, people would just pirate it but Microsoft hoped that they would get the money back from a cut in the app sales in their store... What? The people that Microsoft believes won't spend on and OS update will now all of a sudden spend money on apps?!? (and a lot to cover the approx $100 for the OS) Microsoft public push for 1 Billion as good and admirable but what happens after they reach that target and they're left with a 5 billion depth because no one spent any money on apps? We all know now with One Drive that they're are comfortable with give and take, they have to make money after all

 

[jmagwp]

Microsoft effectively instituted a price increase, like every other company on the planet that sells things. Are you saying that anytime a maker/seller of goods and services raises prices they are acting in bad faith? If so, please give back every pay raise you've ever received because you're acting in bad faith as an employee. Or do these rules not apply to you because you're special?

 

[jmagwp]

Reason has no place in an irrational rant.

 

[jmagwp]

No, I didn't sign their Terms until AFTER I had bought and setup my Lumia.

I bought my Lumia partly because it was Advertised with 30GB online storage as a selling bullet point in store (3rd party store but with Microsoft Lumia display advertisement).

That's exactly why we have these consumer laws in the UK, to protect mis-selling via T&Cs.

How long ago did you purchase that phone and for how long do you expect to be provided a free service? Do you work for free? Or you should get paid but no one else should?