Microsoft lowering *all* existing OneDrive(Free) accounts to 5GB on July 13, 2016

[Stuff_]

I pay $1.99 for 100GB extra storage on my Google Drive.

I have no need for One Drive.

[dalekphalm]

4 hours ago, ElfenSky said:

I remember back around November or December 2015, that MS had a website you could sign-up to so you would keep your 15+15Gb (which I currently use and want to keep using)...

 

Does this affect the people who opted in there as well, or only the ones that missed it?

This does not affect those who "opted in" to keep their higher capacity storage. Though there is no guarantee that Microsoft will keep giving us the bonus storage indefinitely. I would assume you will only get a year's worth of bonus storage after the cutoff date.

 

4 hours ago, ElfenSky said:

What do you mean? The website and service is still live, last I checked, and working properly...

Mega had a hostile takeover, if I recall correctly, and Kim Dot Com doesn't even own it anymore. But I could be wrong. The service does still exist in some form at least, but it might not be "Mega 2.0" anymore.

[Doobeedoo]

Hmm I have 15GB free and 10GB additional bonus. Well either way, doesn't affect me cause I don't store so much online. Though very odd for this.

[Crosseyed Sniper]

You have got to be kidding me! I just uploaded 11 gigs of files to my OneDrive account not even 2 hours ago! In fact, I have had my free 30 gig account for awhile now, but haven't even used it until just a few hours ago.

 

If I would have seen this post earlier I wouldn't have bothered uploading those files. Good grief! That sucks!

 

 

^ Me right now.

[Crosseyed Sniper]

5 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

This does not affect those who "opted in" to keep their higher capacity storage. Though there is no guarantee that Microsoft will keep giving us the bonus storage indefinitely. I would assume you will only get a year's worth of bonus storage after the cutoff date.

 

Mega had a hostile takeover, if I recall correctly, and Kim Dot Com doesn't even own it anymore. But I could be wrong. The service does still exist in some form at least, but it might not be "Mega 2.0" anymore.

I skipped reading through the thread to make my post and missed this. I hope you're right.

[dalekphalm]

1 hour ago, Crosseyed Sniper said:

You have got to be kidding me! I just uploaded 11 gigs of files to my OneDrive account not even 2 hours ago! In fact, I have had my free 30 gig account for awhile now, but haven't even used it until just a few hours ago.

 

If I would have seen this post earlier I wouldn't have bothered uploading those files. Good grief! That sucks!

 

-snip-

 

^ Me right now.

To be fair, we've known this was coming since at least 5 months ago. They're just announcing the exact date now. There was a huge thread about it back in November.

[Delicieuxz]

13 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

If people are willing to pay, why not?

 

Say you manufacture a screw driver. You sell it at 10$, but the demand is so high, people are willing to pay 50$ for it... well would it not be stupid to not charge 50$?

 

Contrary to what is sometimes assumed, money is not the only consideration in a healthy business, and it is not necessarily smart, or respectable to charge the maximum that can be gotten away with. In any subject, when all considerations are reduced to one thing, like maximizing money, then you're no longer working with the truth of the matter. Business is not all about maximizing profit, and the companies who act that way are also not the ones innovating the best, or creating the most healthy communities and satisfied customers.

 

With MS reducing its free cloud data, there are some negative connotations to it. For one, people don't really appreciate it when something is offered to them, and then it is recinded after the offer is accepted. And doing this makes a statement against the person who takes back what they previously gave - that they're non-reliable, that they're inconsistent, that their word doesn't mean a whole lot, and that dealing with them is a risk... and all of these perception already existed to many people regarding Microsoft, for a variety of reasons, and to act this way further adds to this characterization of MS.

 

Also, competitors are offering more, and this move makes Microsoft look like it is not as serious, or capable as its competitors.

 

 

 

"people are willing to pay 50$ for it... well would it not be stupid to not charge 50$?"

 

You may just be playing devil's advocate, but this reduced-consideration approach is exemplary sociopathism. And sociopathism / psychopathism is behind the failings of many businesses, and is an unhealthy mentality that results in unhealthy, and unsustainable business practices. And it generally is only people who've never come close to managing a public service, and who aren't likely to find themselves in that position, who presume that it's all about max dollars. And the companies who are headed by a psychopathic CEO tend to experience short-term gain, while suffering long-term harm. And some businesses don't correct their management until it's too late, and they find themselves unable to recover from the harm caused by having been led by a psychopath, and consequently go out of business.

 

MS has a history of unhealthy business practices, and of being an inefficient company, which brute forces its way to the top with anti-competitive and coercive behaviours. Like AlexTheRose said:

 

14 hours ago, AlexTheRose said:

Microsoft has had a really poor track record when it comes to innovation and making new ideas happen. It’s their curse in a way, and honestly they probably would’ve bit the dust long ago if it weren’t for Windows.

 

Microsoft is a sociopathic company that has maintained itself by the leverage of having been in its position first, and having had the muscle to prevent anyone else from developing to the point of being able to unrestrainedly challenging it.

[Briggsy]

34 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

Contrary to what is sometimes assumed, money is not the only consideration in a healthy business, and it is not necessarily smart, or respectable to charge the maximum that can be gotten away with. In any subject, when all considerations are reduced to one thing, like maximizing money, then you're no longer working with the truth of the matter. Business is not all about maximizing profit, and the companies who act that way are also not the ones innovating the best, or creating the most healthy communities and satisfied customers.

 

With MS reducing its free cloud data, there are some negative connotations to it. For one, people don't really appreciate it when something is offered to them, and then it is recinded after the offer is given. And doing this makes a statement against the person who takes back what they previously gave - that they're unreliable, that they're inconsistent, that their work doesn't mean a whole lot... and all of these thoughts already were there regarding Microsoft to many people, for a variety of reasons, and to act thing way further adds to this characterization of MS.

 

Also, competitors are offering more, and this move makes Microsoft look like it is not as serious or capable as its competitors.

 

 

 

"people are willing to pay 50$ for it... well would it not be stupid to not charge 50$?"

 

You may just be playing devil's advocate, but this reduced-consideration approach is examplary sociopathism, and sociopathism / psychopathism is behind the failing of many businesses, and is an unhealthy mentality that results in unhealthy, and unsustainable business practices. And it generally is only people who've never come close to managing a public service, and who aren't likely to find themselves in that position, who presume that it's all about max dollars. And the companies who are headed by a psychopathic CEO tend to experience short-term gain, while suffering long-term harm. And some of them don't correct the problem until it's too late to save the company.

 

MS has a history of unhealthy business practices, and of being an inefficient company, which brute forces its way to the top with anti-competitive and coercive behaviours. As AlexTheRose said:

 

 

You hit on something I failed to say in the OP, which is about reliability and consistency, and I totally agree. Human behavior is dictated by precedent (much like any legal system that follows human behavior), and once a company goes down a path, consumers expect them to keep going down that path. In the case of Microsoft, unreliable behavior is expected and even accepted. Not in a million years would anyone expect Google to reduce their free Apps/email storage of 15GB, but with microsoft, they have repeatedly set a bad precedent for themselves and appear to be inconsistent. 

 

With Google for example, you get an entire cloud office suite that is far more customizable and robust than most people can even imagine (or even realize), addons, scripting, email, 15GB of storage, all for free. No one in a million years would believe that Google would decrease the storage size on any tier. Microsoft needs to at least match this or they cannot compete. Competition is good, but this is MS shooting themselves in the foot.

[lightningterror]

This is why I use Google Drive.

[SparkyRain]

Lol getting 36tb free on yunpan and 2tb on baidu. Microsoft only in for the money.

[patrick3027]

Old news. To be fair, their cloud storage business is probably losing money right now. Ubuntu and Copy recently  closed their cloud business because it was not economically viable.

 

 

 

 

[LAwLz]

20 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

I have never seen anything unlimited work.

Unlimited data on network plans. But I don't think that's the type of service you meant.

 

20 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Microsoft's OneDrive is good, has a lot of advantages over Google, and many don't know them, such as lighter (but still pretty feature complete) web version of Office free, to properly view, and edit documents unlike Google.

Google has that too.

 

 

 

Question: Do you get offered the free 365 subscription even if you opted in to keep your storage? I haven't gotten any email about it but I am not sure if anyone has gotten it yet.

Currently using 8.4GB out of 40 (15GB base, 15GB camera roll and 10GB loyalty bonus).

[TetraSky]

Didn't Microsoft let you "opt-out" of the downgrade a few weeks back in order to keep the 15GB? I remember doing so for my outlook account linked to my windows tablet and windows phone

 

In any case, I don't really use OneDrive. I have a few pictures on there that I took with my phone and automatically synced to OneDrive without my knowledge, found that out recently, didn't bother getting rid of them, it's not even 20MB in total.

I just don't trust "cloud storage" that I do not have 100% control over.

[GoodBytes]

46 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Unlimited data on network plans. But I don't think that's the type of service you meant.

Suuuurre. Until they throttle your connection like crazy, or you pay a premium for it.

 

46 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Google has that too.

It doesn't have Office. You have Google Docs, that does destroy Word documents, Power Point, and Excel sheets layouts, if you have anything somewhat complex. LibreOffice does a FAR better job than Google Docs, and that is awful to start with.

[Briggsy]

12 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

It doesn't have Office. You have Google Docs, that does destroy Word documents, Power Point, and Excel sheets layouts, if you have anything somewhat complex. LibreOffice does a FAR better job than Google Docs, and that is awful to start with.

That's the downside of google apps. Its built by geeks for geeks. to an average user, googles ecosystem appears to be very unbaked and vanilla, but its the unbaked and programmable nature of their software that makes it very powerful in capable hands, especially for business. It's a classic example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. 

[LAwLz]

16 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Suuuurre. Until they throttle your connection like crazy, or you pay a premium for it.

100Mbps up, 100Mbps down.

300 SEK (about 35 USD) a month.

Free VPN included (because my ISP is against spying, and by Swedish law an ISP has to store things like which websites customers visit, but a VPN providers does not).

 

I have used at least 1500GB on my desktop alone the last 30 days. That is not counting all the Netflix we stream on our TV and none of the other devices. We probably use close to 2TB a month, no throttling happening at all.

 

I pity you if your ISP is so bad you don't even believe me.

 

23 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

It doesn't have Office. You have Google Docs, that does destroy Word documents, Power Point, and Excel sheets layouts, if you have anything somewhat complex. LibreOffice does a FAR better job than Google Docs, and that is awful to start with.

Blame Microsoft for that. They are the ones that fucked up the document standards (not just because they didn't want to use ODT but also the reason why there are two versions of OOXML).

I do agree that Office is better than Google Docs (at least the full version of Office, haven't tried the web one), but Google Docs is very much usable too (I'd say it can "properly edit and view documents"). When we do reports for school we usually just write everything in Google Docs, then throw it into Word and make it look nice in there.

[patrickjp93]

On April 8, 2016 at 10:22 AM, Trik'Stari said:

They could just expand the data centre. Or build more of them.

 

But that would eat into those precious profit margins, and we can't have that. This is a clear case of choosing "screw the customer" over "providing a good product/service". And yes, they have a right to do that.

 

But we, as consumers, have a right to criticize them for it, and choose another product/service that is better, which pretty much everyone is going to do.

That takes both a lot of time and a ton of money. They can't just do it on the fly. It takes years to properly build a big data center.

[dalekphalm]

6 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

100Mbps up, 100Mbps down.

300 SEK (about 35 USD) a month.

Free VPN included (because my ISP is against spying, and by Swedish law an ISP has to store things like which websites customers visit, but a VPN providers does not).

 

I have used at least 1500GB on my desktop alone the last 30 days. That is not counting all the Netflix we stream on our TV and none of the other devices. We probably use close to 2TB a month, no throttling happening at all.

 

I pity you if your ISP is so bad you don't even believe me.

 

Blame Microsoft for that. They are the ones that fucked up the document standards (not just because they didn't want to use ODT but also the reason why there are two versions of OOXML).

I do agree that Office is better than Google Docs (at least the full version of Office, haven't tried the web one), but Google Docs is very much usable too (I'd say it can "properly edit and view documents"). When we do reports for school we usually just write everything in Google Docs, then throw it into Word and make it look nice in there.

To be fair, he lives in Canada - our Internet industry is even worse than the US. Caps are the standard, and even ones that include Unlimited often have a "fair use" policy allowing them to throttle heavy users.

 

Hell, most common broadband plans include comparatively small caps, like 150 GB/mo, etc.

[Trixanity]

In some countries Internet access and cell coverage is almost considered a right, so that's why one reason conditions are much better. 

 

I'm personally getting 120/120 mbit for $15/month with unlimited data. Some ISPs have in recent years established fair use policies but I'm not sure how well they are enforced. I've heard some people say they've went way beyond the limit with no consequence. Although from what I know those limits follow price/bandwidth tiers, so most heavy users usually go for the higher tiers where caps are measured in terabytes. 

 

As for cloud services: why not both? I use both interchangeably. It gives me a larger aggregate storage capacity. 

 

I will say that I think I tend to lean towards Google on that. Why? I'm not sure. Probably because I'm using Android so the integration is much better for daily use. Generally I think the design language, functionality and features mostly favor Google as well. 

 

I think one reason why I also stick with Microsoft is because my Hotmail account (now Microsoft account) was created before Gmail even existed, so a lot of things are tied to it, so it's difficult to switch and the same holds true for Google as well now. So I'm bound to both,  whether I like it or not. 

[GoodBytes]

45 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

100Mbps up, 100Mbps down.

300 SEK (about 35 USD) a month.

Free VPN included (because my ISP is against spying, and by Swedish law an ISP has to store things like which websites customers visit, but a VPN providers does not).

 

I have used at least 1500GB on my desktop alone the last 30 days. That is not counting all the Netflix we stream on our TV and none of the other devices. We probably use close to 2TB a month, no throttling happening at all.

 

I pity you if your ISP is so bad you don't even believe me.

 

Blame Microsoft for that. They are the ones that fucked up the document standards (not just because they didn't want to use ODT but also the reason why there are two versions of OOXML).

I do agree that Office is better than Google Docs (at least the full version of Office, haven't tried the web one), but Google Docs is very much usable too (I'd say it can "properly edit and view documents"). When we do reports for school we usually just write everything in Google Docs, then throw it into Word and make it look nice in there.

I am sure that Microsoft can offer unlimited OneDrive storage if you are willing to pay to Microsoft 35$ US a month.

 

Seeing that other software does a a better job than Google with Office files, some near excellent. Sorry, I can't blame Microsoft on this one. Take a Word document (docX), rename it to .zip, extract it, and you have all the XML file, images, and so on that was put in the document. Going through the XML file, you can see how things are layed out, and can build a reader. Once the basis is known, all you need to do, is go over every feature of Word, and see how they appear in the XML file, and translate that. Google has resources for this, but like many things they do, it is half-ass, sadly, which most of them they pull the plug on, unless, no one cares, and uses it like Google docs, or Android with its broken update system blocking distribution of security updates, while Apple, and heck even Microsoft has no problem on this, nor does Linux based OSs (beside Android), but an update system like on Windows desktop PC or Linux based PC, is seen as an impossibility for the company to make for their phone OS. Anyway, that is a different topic. Google doesn't care, because people uses their service/software. Once things go down, see how magically Google Docs will actually be genuinely good, same for Android... of course, it needs to go down in the first place. It is an issue that all companies faces. We see this with Microsoft, many times, and Intel (How many years we were with Pentium 4, single core CPU?, and now they are slowing down again due to lack of any competition, and their integrated graphics solution drivers are laughably bad. So bad, that while AMD and Nvidia managed to release drivers, Intel had nothing until Microsoft sent a team to Intel and do the work for them. Must be millions saved in Intel pocket right there. I wonder if now they'll start doing this... let others fix their drivers). Anyway.

 

[LAwLz]

19 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

As for cloud services: why not both? I use both interchangeably. It gives me a larger aggregate storage capacity. 

I do that too, but it is not as convenient.

OneDrive -> Backup of photos

Google Drive -> School stuff (even though our school has Office 365...)

Dropbox -> Everything else (like if I want to show a picture to someone)

 

It would be nice to have everything in one service.

 

6 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

I am sure that Microsoft can offer unlimited OneDrive storage if you are willing to pay to Microsoft 35$ US a month.

I am not willing to do that, and they do not have that offer.

I was just saying that my Internet connection is "unlimited" and works as advertised. No hooks attached.

 

 

10 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Seeing that other software does a a better job than Google with Office files, some near excellent. Sorry, I can't blame Microsoft on this one. Take a Word document (docX), rename it to .zip, extract it, and you have all the XML file, images, and so on that was put in the document. Going through the XML file, you can see how things are layed out, and can build a reader. Once the basis is known, all you need to do, is go over every feature of Word, and see how they appear in the XML file, and translate that.

I can blame Microsoft for it, and I will blame Microsoft for it. Have you ever looked at how ISO 29500 came about? It was pretty clear Microsoft did it to try and kill competing solutions. I talked about it in this post. Here it is again if you're interested:

Spoiler

ISO, the international organization for standardization, tried to solve the problem of document formats back in 2006 by creating the ODF. ODF, or Open Document Format is what is most commonly used by open office suits such as Libre and Open Office by default. Since this was seen as a threat to Microsoft, they decided to make their own "open" format in 2007. This format, called OpenXML or ECMA-376 was originally rejected by ISO because there was no point in making it when they already had ODF. However, somehow Microsoft managed to get their format fast-tracked in ISO even though 20 out of 30 countries on the JTC-1 committee criticized the format.

So because of that and some other reasons, the OpenXML format was split up into two ISO standards. One was called ISO 29500 Transitional, and the other one was ISO 29500 Strict. The strict version was the one officially accepted by ISO, and the transitional version was granted to Microsoft in order to allow them to smoothly transition users from the old, closed formats, to the new open one. Sounds good in theory.

 

However, Microsoft then decided to not fully implement the strict version of the ISO standard in Office 2010. Office 2010 (and later from what I know) can only write to the transitional format, but it can read both ECMA-376 and ISO 29500 Strict.

 

What this means is that when you open an OpenXML format in Office, it will be able to read it just fine. However, when you write an OpenXML document in Office it will write it in the transitional format which is not the format approved by ISO for continued usage. So since Microsoft's programs write in a format only approved to them during a transitional phase, the other office suits which supports OpenXML will try to read them as ISO 29500 Strict, which is the actual standard which should be used, and that causes some problems.

 

I haven't checked what Office uses today, but back in 2010 Microsoft wrote that they would move to ISO 29500 Strict no later than Office 15. Once they do that the compatibility issues should disappear.

Also, reading through the XML file to see how OOXML works in Office is not possible either, because the documentation is pretty shit (last time I read about it). For example the printer settings are/were stored in a binary blog and could therefore only work on Windows. No documentation on how to interpret the printOptions if you wanted to implement it yourself (like in LibreOffice) exist(ed).

The specifications does not say how clipboard data works either. The documentation just said "it must be -3, -2, -1, 0 or any positive integer", and then did not explain anything about what the differences were between the numbers. The formats were also binary blobs. No documentation on it.

OOXML also uses very few other standards, while ODF does. That's why the specification is something like 6000 pages long (compared to about 700 pages). Like I explained above, some of the things OOXML relies on are binary blobs. It's things like that which prevents OOXML from being a true open standard, and proper support for it in other programs. Not just that, but there are issues with Microsoft changing the standard as well.

 

 

It does not take a genius to understand that if a Microsoft format does not work properly on ANY competing products, despite their attempts to make it work, then the problem lies with Microsoft. Especially since other formats works just fine.

Here is a pretty good read about ODF vs OOXML: If I was Sauron

[Pesmerga]

I still have 30 gb since I opted in to mantain them, plsu I activated the office 365 gift they sent a few weeks ago

[JT1600]

Now I need to search for another cloud to store my files..  Thank you Microsoft  

[byalexandr]

But I have like 20GB of photos. Are they going to hold it ransom until I pay up?!

[Dabombinable]

On 4/9/2016 at 2:09 AM, dalekphalm said:

To be fair, he lives in Canada - our Internet industry is even worse than the US. Caps are the standard, and even ones that include Unlimited often have a "fair use" policy allowing them to throttle heavy users.

 

Hell, most common broadband plans include comparatively small caps, like 150 GB/mo, etc.

That's identical to our ISP here in Australia. Unlimited plan + "fair use cap" that pretty much means that all post paid plans here are unlimited, just they slow down after you'd downloaded+uploaded certain amounts of data. And that's all on 4Mbps ADLS2, which is BTW half the maximum ADSL1 speed so therefore not ADSL2 speeds (my ISP has admitted that their network can't attain the advertised speeds. However they get a "jail out of free" card by using the cop-out "up to 20Mbps"