Cloud computing is all the rage nowadays. Apple certainly gave the online storage trend a big boost earlier this month when it provided iOS users with some free storage space on its iCloud system. Now HTC has posted word on its Twitter page that starting today, owners of its Android-based smartphones will get free access to 5 GB of cloud storage via DropBox.
That's a pretty generous deal and it's obviously supposed to be an answer to the iCloud's own 5 GB of free storage. Microsoft already offers Windows Phone users a whopping 25 GB of free storage on its Skydrive cloud service. As good as having a place to back up or store your important files is to most smartphone and PC users, we do have to wonder if this trend could be a double edged sword.
There is something to be said for having a local storage system where you can access your important files anytime you want. Putting your data on a cloud servers is important as well but there's one big flaw; your Internet connection has to be working in order to access your file servers on any cloud-based system.
Let's face it; our broadband infrastructure here in the US is crappy. How many times have you experienced down time with your Internet connection that extends for more than, say, a few minutes? We have had those kinds of issues all too often yet we would still like to be able to work while the problems is being fixed. So you are pretty much done for if an important file is in your cloud storage space and you can't get to it.
The moral of this story; cloud servers are cool, and we use them. But we don't depend on them.
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