Free cloud storage, 5 GB
Can’t decide how much memory to get on your pad or slate computer? Wonder no more, here’s 5 GB for free …
Amazon Cloud Drive
You have probably heard of DropBox. In fact I have pushed it for a long time as a favorite and I have the 50 gig account (which is completely full). Now at the same time I have had an Amazon S3 account since December 30, 2007 where I have stored massive amounts of data for about $5 per month – First 1 TB / month of storage used $0.140 per GB. In my case that’s about 35 GB.
If I switched to reduced redundancy the price goes down even more – First 1 TB / month of storage used $0.093 per GB so about $5 per month for 50 GB. Compared to DropBox that’s about 1/2 price … sort of.
DropBox does not mention data transfer in their pricing because they assume most subscribers are going to upload and leave it. Of course we have no metrics available on that so it is a statement of assumption from experience through operating a similar service through about 2001. Amazon, however, does mention transfer and it’s 10 cents per GB. Add this to the storage and if you upload a few hundred gigs in a single month it could get costly.
But wait, there’s more.
While I was at the tech conference REtechSouth in Atlanta Amazon went and threw a firecracker in the honeypot (don’t ask if you don’t know) and released their own online storage simplified for the average user. In fact in direct competition with DropBox who uses the Amazon S3 cloud for their clients.
Amazon Cloud Drive
What Amazon offers is phenomenal pricing and some built in gadgets to make directly storing with Amazon much easier and more attractive. Admittedly Amazon’s Cloud Player for Web and Android are great tools. Chances are the 2% of people out there trapped on an Apple device will whine about it since it uses Flash but if Amazon does the smart business thing they’ll spend the extra bucks and create an iPhone app while the iPhone/iPad is still viable.
Here’s what you get from Amazon for free:
- 5GB of storage
- Amazon Cloud Player
- Unlimited access from any computer
Want a tip on how to get 1 year of storage for 20 GB? Purchase an album from the Amazon music store and get 20 GB free for a year. After that, at current prices, the 20 GB account is a whopping $20US per year. That’s enough space for 4000 songs or about 2000 images from the standard mobile device.
