When I heard that Amazon was releasing a cloud drive I thought to myself, “not another one”.  How many Dropbox clones can you have.  Fortunately this was not the case.  Finally a cloud service that does not do a “me too”.  The Amazon cloud is a bit different in a couple of ways.  First off, it is not a sync program.  What it really does is make the cloud a repository and central storage location.  Another words it sort of a push system where you select what gets pushed to the cloud and where it sits unless you ask for it.   Secondly it ties into your Amazon cloud services so movies and music you may have bought show up there enabling quick access to your data as well as your media.  This particular cloud service actually complements the others because it is totally different and very controllable.

 

Overview

After you install the desktop app, you see an icon in your task tray much like the other cloud services.

SNAG-0053

To use it and to send something to you cloud storage, you have to go to the file explorer.  If does not install as a folder but rather a destination.  Right click on a file, select “Send To”, then select “Amazon Cloud Drive”.

SNAG-0052

SNAG-0049

SNAG-0047

Once you click on “Open Cloud Drive Website”, you are taken right to your Amazon main screen where you can see all of your files.

SNAG-0046

SNAG-0050

 

Summary

Pros

  • Lets you select single, multiple files, or entire folders to be sent as opposed to the “sync” everything approach.
  • Straight forward web interface.
  • Very controllable

Cons

  • No drive folder so you have to go into the file manager to upload a file.
  • Not as automatic as other services so you have to know which files you want to copy to the cloud.  No versioning (so far only DropBox supports versioning).
  • No automatic updates.  If you change a file on your desktop, you have to remember to upload it.