Solo Technology

I’ve spent some time this weekend pondering Box.net and Omnidrive. In particular: How to decide which to use? I surely don’t need both. I used Omnidrive a lot last year. I’ve been using Box.net a lot this year. At no point have I tried to actually figure out which one I like best.

Why have I been using Box.net more this year? Primarily, the ease of integration with iGoogle and Netvibes. One of those two is my start page for every browser on every computer I use (and believe me, that’s a lot of browsers!). Having it right there on the start page is so nice when I want to grab something from my Box.net account — saves the steps of actually browsing and logging into the “proper” Box.net website.

I keep hoping to see Omnidrive do something similar. No luck so far.

Know what I like about Omnidrive the most right now? I can upload files larger than 10MB (the Box.net cap.). I don’t know what the max file size actually is, but I know it’s more than 17MB, which happens to be the compressed size of my most recent backup of all web stuff.

I also like the web interface a bit more. The tree view on the left helps with navigating folders quite a bit.

Know what I want to like about Omnidrive? The Windows client. Unfortunately, I’ve just never quite got it to work reliably for me. That might be related to the fact that I currently have 3 “virtual” drives installed on this machine: One for FolderShare, one for Mozy and the Omnidrive one. Regardless, the old version and the current beta both caused me CPU utilization issues and had to be removed.

Both services have a lot of common points as well — I’ll skip those for now or this article would grow a bit dramatically.

While writing this I’ve been musing over what it is that has enticed me to switch back and forth. Interestingly enough, I think it largely comes down to the fact that folks from both companies have actually stopped by here and left comments, offered support and/or sent emails. I’m a sucker for that approach!

Heck, that’s why I’m looking harder at Omnidrive again — Nik stopped by earlier this week (granted, I had mentioned his product…). I’m reasonably certain my switch to Box.net can be traced to the time Aaron dropped me some email in response to a post that mentioned I was having some struggles.

There’s an important marketing lesson in there somewhere…

Now granted, there are much more difficult issues to ponder besides which (free) online storage service to use. Of the two, which do you prefer — and why?

5 Responses to “More on the Box.net and Omnidrive Thing”

1. zune on July 9th, 2007 7:53 pm
   

   If the file size is limited there are zip programs that divide a large file into pieces.

2. Chris on July 9th, 2007 8:44 pm
   

   True enough - and 7-zip is the one I prefer to use.

   I’ll still posit that it’s quicker and easier to make a zip vs. making a zip in 10MB chunks. Not difficult, not the end of the world, but easier nonetheless

3. Nik Cubrilovic on July 19th, 2007 12:20 pm
   

   Hey Chris, we don’t have an upload size limit - give it all you have.

   As for the widgets, I believe there are at least 2 projects going on in our dev community that are building widgets for the various different providers - I don’t have an ETA for them

   With the Windows client, you gotta try the new version, the interim release is here:

   http://www.omnidrive.com/blog/2007/07/04/interim-release-for-vista/

   the final release of that 0.8 version will be out soon (our web interface went 0.8 last night)

   cheers,
   nik

4. Chris on July 21st, 2007 10:53 pm
   

   Thanks Nik - Glad you hear about the no limit.

   Get me some widgets!!! Ok fine, I’ll wait, but buy a netvibes or igoogle widget would be so dang handy.

   I tried the interim release earlier this month but had some issues (I’m the first comment on that blog post you linked ). I’ll try again when final comes out.

5. Ollie on August 1st, 2007 2:36 pm
   

   I used to use box.net, but then I discovered mydatabus.com…it has more options than box or omnidrive. 5GB of free storage, 250MB uploads for free accounts (1.5GB paid), photo album creation/sharing, public file link generator, facebook integration, file sharing groups..the list goes on. You can also edit documents/images right from your browser, without needing to download the files..box can’t do that.

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