I first heard about Sky Drive last year and thought it was a great alternative for people needing a basic word processor completely free of charge. Even better was that you could access you documents from any computer with an internet connection. Rather than me continuing on naming each feature here is my Pros list:
Pros of Microsoft Sky Drive - Word
- Free
- Easy to use
- 25 GB of online storage space
- Can upload existing documents to view, share or edit them
- Looks just like a really basic copy of Microsoft Word (making it easy for people who have used Word before)
- The ability to format text (font size, style, colour and alignment) and insert tables and pictures into a document
- Full compatibility with Microsoft Word, it is after all a Microsoft product
They are some of the cool features – and don't get me wrong it is a great service but from my experience really only worthwhile for viewing and storing files and maybe writing up really basic documents.
As I set out to write out my assignment I found I started having issues; the tools I needed just weren't available. Trying to change formatting to interpret how it would look on a page was largely a guessing game. The page layout is non-existent, as you open the document it takes up full screen so it is difficult to easily see how what you are writing will look like set out on a page (it can be done but you have to keep switching back and forth between the reading and editing views). There is no functionality to enter a page break making it hard to properly space your assignment as I found out when trying to insert the cover page. I also had problems while using Sky Drive in Internet Explorer I found that after typing a few words the cursor wouldn't line up with the sentence position, it was very strange. I switched over to Mozilla Firevox and that issue went away.
All in all I got through the cover page and the first question and then started looking for alternatives. There just isn't enough functionality to use Sky Drive as a complete word processing replacement. I am sure this is done on purpose by Microsoft as they want you to go out and BUY their full product. Anyway here is the list of Cons:
Cons of Microsoft Sky Drive – Word
- Poor layout (unable to easily see how your document will look on paper
- Poor page formatting options
- No ability to set tabs (you can use the indent tool but it is not easy to see how it will be laid out on the page)
- No page break option
- Compatibility issue with IE 8?
- Only saves as docx
So overall while it is a nifty tool the only thing I will be using Sky Drive for is a backup and sharing service – and this it does really well. It is easy to upload documents and view them making it a great alternative to a USB drive, although I would recommend that you use it in addition to your USB drive, to backup all your important documents. Now I have read from a number of people recently losing all of their work due to hard drive failure. This is one of the reasons why a service like this is really valuable (there are definitely other backup options out there and I will be writing about some more soon).
As for writing my assignment I gave up trying to use Sky Drive to do that.
If you want to check out SkyDrive for yourself go to
skydrive.live.com/
Here are some screen shots from my experience.
Initial layout to create a new Document, from here you also have the option to view all your uploaded documents:
Document onscreen layout (it is hard to visualise how/where your text will appear on the page in this format):
Document reading layout - you can view how it will look on the page but will have to keep switching between views to see
Hope you have found this review informative. I will be writing a few more very soon to tell you about other online services I have found and use including Google Docs, Dropbox and Live Mesh just to name a few. Stay tuned!
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