Pie in the Sky

Because hypotheticals are annoying, let’s suppose that you were in the process of moving and let’s suppose further that you find you have more possessions than can reasonably fit into your new digs. Not to worry, because an acquaintance of yours says you can stash all of your extra stuff in his barn for as long as you want; no worries at all. So you take him up on it and begin shoveling your stuff into his barn and you continue to add things to the pile long after you’re finished moving. Then one day, years later, this barn-owner informs you that you can still store stuff at his place but only about two cubic feet worth, and anything in excess of that will be burned if you don’t get it out of there soon. How might that make you feel? Do you really have any right to be upset? If my recent experience with Microsoft OneDrive is any indication the answer to that question can only be maybe!

I first signed up for OneDrive way back in 2008 when it was still styled as “Windows Live Skydrive”. It offered a then-unthinkable 5gb of free online storage which I thought was marvelous though I never really used it for anything but sharing the odd file or two with friends. Fast forward to last year when my then-new employer issued me a smartphone with several mandatory apps already installed. Drive space already being limited, I downloaded the OneDrive app to automatically backup my pictures and videos so that I wouldn’t need to keep them stored locally. The drive space offered by OneDrive had blossomed from 5gb to 30gb which was plenty for a casual user like me.

Last week, I logged into the web portal for OneDrive to try to find a particular file and I was greeted by an advisement that read: “On July 27, 2016, the amount of storage that comes with OneDrive will change from 15 GB to 5 GB. We are also discontinuing the 15 GB camera roll bonus. You can learn more at our FAQ.”

I quickly took to the best user-tech bulletin boards that the web had to offer to see if there were any loopholes I might exploit to prevent my drive size from being reduced. The most common responses were “No,” “I host my own cloud using a Mandriva server that I stole from work,” and “lol, e@t a d!ck microsux!!1!” Another piece of advice that I saw more than once was to migrate to Google Drive which is what I will probably wind up doing. I already use GD for web hosting reasons and it’s been very stable for several years. Despite all the fuss it’s caused me, I think I will miss using OneDrive’s interface. In my opinion it’s cleaner and more intuitive than GD’s and perhaps more importantly, even after eight years, OneDrive still looks very much like it did when I first signed up for it! Right down to the “Total drive space: 5gb”!

-Ryan