I wonder if the European Commission will open another antitrust case. The last one was about the "Tying of Internet Explorer to Windows", this one could be about the "Tying of Cloud Offerings to Windows"

To me it seems that when users are going to upgrade to or buy Windows 8, they will probably opt-in to cloud storage from Microsoft. Long term Microsoft may lock-in a very significant percentage of desktop, laptop, smartphone and tablet users to their services. It doesn't seem to be a level playing field for e.g. Dropbox.

More generally speaking, it looks like the big three have a strategy to use the OS as the 'gateway drug' to their online (cloud) offerings. By offering integrated always available API's to 3rd party developers they ensure the path of least resistance always leads towards iCloud, Google Docs/Drive and Windows Live/SkyDrive.

Microsoft still has a monopoly on the desktop as far as I can tell. So it's going to be interesting if another antitrust case will be started. We may end up with a 'Windows 8 N' or a "Select your cloud provider" choice screen in the future.

I think that is a load of toss.

Sure there are dedicated clients for Windows, but you can access the entire of their "cloud offerings" via the web and some rather nifty APIs.

Ultimately my point is that it is no different to any other "cloud" provider out there.

You can also quite happily create a word doc on skydrive from a web browser. You can even mount a skydrive volume on Linux as it's just a WebDAV share as well.

Microsoft aren't the same company these days.

Check this out:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd208104(v=prot.10)....

I can't find info on mounting a Skydrive via webdav from Linux. You sure about this?

http://windowslivehelp.com/thread.aspx?threadid=cac1c1ae-b78...

Microsoft would have to conspire and use its monopoly powers to undermine and place barriers to entry of SkyDrive's competitors, for something such as the above to happen.

Bundling or providing for download a cloud storage application or service is not illegal. Having a monopoly is not illegal. Providing useful applications and features with Windows is not illegal.

Don't want SkyDrive? Don't use it. Do as you did before, download your choice of a cloud storage application and use that instead.

From what I've read about the way Metro style apps can implement contracts it wouldn't be hard to build an S3 app that let you load and save files from any application to your Amazon storage.

A better product always wins out. The browser antitrust case was a farce. What actually caused IE share to go down was not the antitrust ruling but a much better product by firefox and chrome. If dropbox is better, it will win no matter if skydrive/iCloud and google cloud are integrated in their respective OS.

Wow. If your PC is on you will be able to stream video (and browse pictures and files) with a 2 factor authorization. Pretty impressive (even though that probably won't be available outside US). They took their sweet time with the SkyDrive desktop app but it seems it's worth it

Windows 7 already does remote streaming. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/feature...

It's an awesome feature that not many people know they have.

Only problem is both server and client need to be win7. Would be more useful if the client could be anything.

That's not true. Any DNLA client works as well. In my case a Bravia EX series.

I can right click and "play to Bravia" on any media file and browse my media from the TV unit.

I hope they fix the file locking issues Mesh has had since the beginning. I was a big fan and user of Mesh for quite a while but switched to Dropbox 100% because of this problem.

For whatever reason Live Mesh appears to lock files for way too long such that if you use it to sync files that are always changing (because you're a compulsive manual saver in your IDE for example) you're bound to see conflicts between the program trying to save the file and Mesh.

This sort of conflict occurred for me all the time when using Mesh, even the newest one in Live Essentials 2011.. make a change, save it, now Mesh has to sync that file, you make another change and save it again and your code editor complains about not being able to write to the file (because Mesh is holding a lock on it for far longer than seems necessary). Haven't had this issue once with Dropbox so that's why I use Dropbox and ditched Mesh.

If anyone from Microsoft's Mesh/SkyDrive/Win8 teams sees this, please fix this issue because it makes Mesh nearly unusable for me, but other than this one thing I prefer Mesh to Dropbox (I like being able to sync any directory anywhere on my system without jumping through hoops, YMMV).

Why are you using mesh to save source code? This is what source control software is for. Getting it onto other machines is only half the point, also revision history, branching, blaming and conflict resolution are important.

Not that that should detract from your main point about locking for too long, that isn't good. But I wouldn't recommend using that sort of thing for source code is what I'm sayin'.

I'm not using Mesh for SCC, I'm using it for file sync.

Basically, I want my desktop and laptop to have a set of directories (including, but not limited to, some that include source code) that are always in sync so I can switch from one to the other seamlessly. I use source code control (svn and git) in addition to the local file sync.

I can't say I've ever experienced this. Are you sure it's not your AV software interfering with Mesh?

I use Security Essentials on any Windows machines if that is a comparison point.

The only AV I use is also MSE. I'm fairly sure this is a Mesh issue as I've only run into when Mesh is running and since switching to almost exactly the same setup to Dropbox (I had to restructure my directories so they all live within the 'Dropbox' but other than that things stayed the same) the issue has disappeared.

Except for the fact that the predecessor to Skydrive was released before Dropbox and is cross platform http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26811

No reason to assume Skydrive wont also be cross platform.

You can actually access Skydrive on any platform via the web if you set up a sync profile to your online storage.

Dropbox is a web "sync" with a client. Skydrive is a web "sync" with a client and an API to write clients for other OSes. I don't see the outrage.

You don't - you can mount it with WebDAV.

That's a lot of words to express "It's iDisk for Windows."

Bollocks. "Nobody can beat x" is never true. "Simple to use" is one of the worst arguments to make, especially when it requires a third-party download to your OS. Skydrive is simple and readily available. If it's installed by default, then yes, somebody can beat Dropbox.

Skydrive is free, and you can sync as much as you want between machines with the included Live-Mesh. The 25GB limit is if you choose to sync some of your folders with the cloud. Skydrive is as simple to use as Dropbox, and there is the nifty Desktop remote access built-in Live-Mesh that lets you interact with any machine running it, even if they are behind a firewall.

"Simple to use" isn't the only metric. Skydrive gives you 25gb of data storage for free. Dropbox charges $120 a year for 50gb.