Looks like competition is driving everything on cloud also, because finally today we have an App for Amazon Cloud Service for both Mac and Windows users. If you are not aware, Amazon gives out 5Gb of free space for Documents, Pictures, Videos and has deep integration with its music service. This is another cloud service you can add to your list after Dropbox, Skydrive and Google Drive, for which, even if you are a new user you get free space of total 2 + 7 + 5 + 5 = 19GB.
The Problem with Cloud Drive App ( If you want to call so )
When I first received the email about the client, I was pretty happy because I thought I will be able to sync files from my computer and still use Windows Explorer to manage it, but what came to be shocking as when installed and signed in, it did not even download a file from my Amazon Cloud Drive.
After messing around a while, it was easy to find that Amazon has just created a Fancy File Uploader which
- It integrates with users context menu AKA the right click, making it easier for you send a file to the cloud drive.
- You can drag and drop files over the Amazon Cloud Drive Icon sitting on your system tray.
- If you want to stop the upload process, the client lets you pause the file transfer or even lets you cancel the whole process.
All this can be done without seeing a file on your cloud in your computer. So now if you are wonder what was the need to set the destination folder at the time of setup, you should notice that it was pointing to Download Folder. I am not sure what it is for because any attempt made to download files or upload files from that location has failed.
All the files, which you want to access from your Amazon Cloud Drive, can only be accessed from the web interface which luckily can be invoked from the client which at least saves your time you would have spent on signing in.
Summary :
Even though its “nice” to have a fancy uploader, but I seriously do not understand what Amazon created such incomplete application. It could have followed the Google path to allow users to move files to Cloud Drive, manually to sync with the computer, but with this, users will be more disappointed because the way it was presented.
Let us know in comments, what is your reaction of this app and what do you think is missing.
