SkyDrive vs. Dropbox

Since this blog is completely random and has no "theme" whatsoever, I'm going to write about my recent encounter with Microsoft SkyDrive vs. Dropbox. Maybe someone will find this useful someday. 

So here are my lists of pros and cons of each:

Microsoft Skydrive

• Pros
• Good price ($25/year for 50 GB)
• Has desktop, iPhone, iPad apps (free)
• iPhone/iPad app is pretty easy to use (ex. I upload all my mobile photos to SkyDrive to free up my iCloud space)
• The desktop app can be easily organized into folders and sub-folders
• The SkyDrive site has Office2010 web apps
• Can access files anywhere at www.skydrive.com
• Cons
• Takes a mind-numbingly long time for initial upload (I had 36 GB of photos and it took four days connected via an Ethernet cord) which led me to initially think I did something wrong and stupidly restarted the upload process -- BIG mistake
• Note: if you have multiple devices with SkyDrive installed on them, good luck. It takes a few days per device.
• SkyDrive doesn't have a "fetch" option to initiate synching
• SkyDrive doesn't sync very often (making the previous problem an even bigger problem)
• The only way I've gotten it to "fetch" is by exiting out of the program completely then restarting my computer because once you've exited SkyDrive, the only way to relaunch it is to reboot your computer. WARNING: Microsoft claims you can simply reopen the program, but it has a glitch and doesn't do anything. I contacted tech support and they said they're looking into the problem. I will write back with an update if this ever gets resolved.

Dropbox

• Pros
• Easy to use 
• Has desktop, iPhone/iPad apps (free)
• Many iPhone/iPad apps have Dropbox integration
•  The desktop app can be easily organized into folders and sub-folders
• Can access files anywhere at www.dropbox.com
• iPhone/iPad app is pretty easy to use
• Initial upload is fairly quick (I uploaded 6 GB of photos in 10 minutes)
• You can earn extra space by getting friends to sign up for Dropbox
• Has a fetch option (right click --> sync)

• Cons
• Cost ($99/year for 100 GB)

Unfortunately, because I'm a broke college student, I went with SkyDrive as a way to back up my files for a pretty decent price. However, the lack of syncing from the desktop to the cloud has led me to completely disregard the desktop option and I sync all my files directly to the website. So far it's been a minor inconvenience, but no problem worth $74 more per year. 

The bottom line: if price is not much of a concern, go with Dropbox. It's unbelievably user-friendly with very few (if any) glitches. 

Update: I switched to Dropbox. SkyDrive is too glitchy to be reliable!