NEW YORK —Moving digital files between your work and home computers can be a pain. Add smartphones and tablet computers to the mix, and you’ve got yourself a giant headache.
Google unveiled its solution to the problem last week, while two other companies, Dropbox and Microsoft, improved their existing offerings. The idea is to leave your files on their computers, so that you can access them from any Internet-connected device.
The three services I tried are free, though you’ll pay if you need more than your allotted storage. Google Drive, Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive share many core features.
Storage
The services give you plenty of free space for word processing, spreadsheets and other basics, but not much for photos and video.
You get 2 gigabytes for free on Dropbox, 5 GB on Google Drive and 7 GB on SkyDrive. Those who used SkyDrive before April 23 can claim 25 GB of free space, and others might be eligible too. Dropbox lets you earn additional free space by recruiting friends or performing tasks such as installing Dropbox’s software.
Signing up for additional free accounts gets cumbersome, so count on paying if you need more. An extra 100 GB will cost $50 a year on SkyDrive and $59.88 on Google Drive, while 100 GB, including the free space, will cost $199 on Dropbox. Cheaper plans with less storage are available.
Winner: SkyDrive
Sharing
All three let you share content by creating links.
On Dropbox, friends with that link can view the content, though you’ll have to go through extra steps to create a “shared folder” for others to edit documents.
With SkyDrive, you can give people editing capabilities with that link. In fact, you can give some people a view-only link and others a link with editing privileges. You can share via e-mail and decide whether recipients can edit documents. You can also post content to Facebook, Twitter and other social networks directly from SkyDrive.
Google Drive also lets you choose whether links come with editing capabilities. But unlike SkyDrive, you can’t create view-only links for some and editing links for others. You can also e-mail items as attachments or as a link to your Google Drive account.
Winner: SkyDrive
Search
Not surprisingly, the best search options come from Google, the Internet search leader.
Searching on Google Drive is fast and versatile. You can search not just by file name, but also the contents of documents in a variety of popular formats.
Dropbox searches by file names only. SkyDrive searches contents of documents in Microsoft formats — Word, PowerPoint and Excel — but it won’t even index the file names for other types, including photos.
Winner: Google Drive
Software
Dropbox has the most software options. For desktops, there’s a Linux version besides ones for Windows and Mac computers. Microsoft and Google support Windows and Macs only. Microsoft’s software won’t work on Windows XP, an older but still widely used system. It also won’t work on earlier versions of XP’s successor, Vista. So, many SkyDrive users will be stuck with the Web-based interface.
Dropbox also is the only service to offer phone apps for both Apple and Android devices. It’s also the only one to support BlackBerrys.
Winner: Dropbox
