Last week I gave in and signed up for my 5GB free Amazon Cloud Storage. While my company does not allow for personal storage devices (cloud or otherwise), I figured this would be a good way to test it out and see what I like or dislike about it.
Some key points that I like about Amazon Cloud Storage:
- MP3's purchased via Amazon do not count toward the storage used
- Amazon MP3's that are purchased are immediately available
- 5GB free
- Reasonably priced storage increases
- Anytime, anywhere (I have WiFi or 3G) access
Interesting, not sure if it's a pro or con:
- Free 15GB (total of 20GB) after initial Amazon MP3 purchase
- Specialized software to manage downloads
- Don't know how storage is reclaimed
I do like that the download manager is configurable. The items that I have personally configured is that I setup the Amazon Download Manager to download my music to my preexisting file location. In addition, it offers the ability to automatically add the music to a Media Player or iTunes library. I originally had this setup, but I disabled it preferring to perform this step manually (at least for now).
I have not attempted to upload any files yet as I'm still a little apprehensive on a couple of things such as:
- Privacy / Security
- Backups or ways of handling corruption
- Since I do not have an automatic renewal (yet) on my 20 GB storage, I'm afraid of what I may lose when my 20 GB limit exprires
Overall getting this setup and using it was extremely simple. So far, I have nothing but good things to say and this certainly raises the promise for future Cloud based offerings.
