Amazon Cloud Drive gains desktop app
Amazon launches desktop app for its Cloud Drive service, which gives consumers 5 gigabytes of free storage in the cloud.
Amazon today introduced a desktop application for Cloud Drive, its consumer data storage service to better rival recently launched Google Drive and other cloud storage services.
The new desktop application for Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Mac OS 10.6 or 10.7 allows people to drag and drop files as if they were transferring files to a local hard drive.
Cloud Drive, which launched last year, gives people tiered levels starting with 5 gigabytes of free storage, or enough to hold about 1,000 songs or 2,000 photos. Services are then available for $20 to $100 per year depending on disk space, maxing out at 1,000 gigabytes.
Up to eight devices can access the service, and music files purchased and stored by Amazon don't count toward a gigabyte limit.
Google last week launched Google Drive, a similar service for storing and sharing files online which also offers 5GB of free capacity, which is cheaper than the popular service Dropbox. With the desktop application, Amazon's service makes Cloud Drive a bit easier to use and better integrated with a computer than its browser-based version.
Amazon Cloud Drive for consumers complements Amazon Web Services, its pay-by-the-drink cloud-computing and storage services for developers.
You can read our hands-on with Amazon Cloud Drive here.