Skydrive and Google Drive are ways to store information on the Internet. Skydrive is by Microsoft and Google Drive is by Google. Both have a basic package for free use and charge if you want additional space. This is also called putting your information on the cloud, the Internet is considered the cloud. Basically when you store your information on the cloud, you know it is stored somewhere, but do not know where
Microsoft's Skydrive lets you store up to 7gb (gigabytes) of information free that can be visible to just you or select others or the public. You can access what you put out there on any computer connected to the Internet using your logon. You can put all types of files
there. If you have large files to share this is one way to do it. Also with
Skydrive are versions of Microsoft applications called Office Web Applications
or OWA.
If you signed up with Skydrive in the past, you need to go back in your account
and take advantage of a free offer. You use Windows Live ID to log in so you
probably are still using the login elsewhere, but it does have a password
reminder. It uses your email address as username. When you go in Skydrive you
will see on the bottom left where it tells you that you have 7gb of storage. If
you click on that, you will go to page with upgrade options. You can buy
additional space here. Now for the nice freebie. For a limited time (they do
not say how long) there is a free upgrade for existing Skydrive users to upgrade
to 25gb free.
Google has also introduced their cloud storage which only gives 5gb of storage
and works with Google Docs (the Google office suite). It is called Google Drive. If you store items in their format they do not count in the 5gb. It works similar to Skydrive.
Skydive and Google Drive are two additional options to backup some of your stuff
and also to be able to access anywhere.