Should you use desktop online storage apps or should you just access the web interface? Although physical storage is still superior to cloud storage in a lot of ways, there are plenty of reasons to take advantage of the free online storage provided by many companies. Even casual users (like myself), can take advantage of these benefits:
- Uploading documents and images in lieu of using USB flash drives
- Backing up extremely important documents in case of hard drive failure (even 2GB is plenty for accounting books, workpapers, and scanned images)
- Syncing files to different computers and devices such as tablets, netbooks, and even smartphones
Ubuntu One
Ubuntu One is a free storage service initially aimed at Ubuntu users but is now available for Windows, Android, and iOS. Ubuntu One has made huge leaps and bounds over the years - integration with the desktop is better than ever and like most of Canonical's products, looks slick and professional.
Although the service started with a small offering of 2GB, users can now get up to 5GB and increase their storage size via referrals. Linux users running an Ubuntu-based machine like Lubuntu would have no problems installing the Ubuntu One desktop application though setting up folders and profiles are still made through the Ubuntu One Dashboard.
Ubuntu One's desktop application isn't perfect even on a fully-updated Ubuntu 12.04 LTS machine. The desktop utility has a bad habit of stalling and crashing on first run though it does sync folders as designed. The errors will somewhat put off users, though the web interface works fine (which is one of the reasons why I didn't test the iOS and Windows Ubuntu One apps yet). Although Canonical has extended Ubuntu One to Android, Windows, and iOS, I'm surprised they haven't released any applications for other Linux distributions like openSUSE and Fedora. Although I recommend using the web interface anyway, I wouldn't mind trying out an Ubuntu One Desktop utility on my other Linux machines.
ASUS Webstorage
The commercial service ASUS Webstorage provides an anemic 2GB for free though users satisfied with the fairly sophisticated service can always upgrade. ASUS Webstorage works best with ASUS machines like the popular Transformer series of tablets, but is great for users looking for some storage to stuff their files in and make them available to other devices. ASUS Webstorage offers a Sync Agent and Remote Drive utility for desktop users and a separate app for mobile devices. The applications are fairly straightforward with Sync Agent setting up folders for backup/sync and Remote Drive setting up your ASUS Webstorage as a remote drive.
The Remote Drive utility installed properly on Windows 7 and I was able to access the main folders of my ASUS Webstorage account. It only displays specific folders initially - you would have to log in on the web service to set up your created folders (or move the folders) to the remote drive if you want to access them. Thankfully, the Remote Drive has an option do disable it from being loaded on startup. One thing users will notice immediately is that uploading files using the web site was faster than using the Remote Drive utility.
ASUS provides a .deb file for installing the Sync Agent utility for Debian-based Linux distributions. I tested this on my Ubuntu 12.04 machine and off the bat the Ubuntu Software Center warned me something was amiss with the ASUSWebstorage.deb file. I installed it anyway but found the utility wouldn't even run via the Terminal as Root or even via the Unity launcher. I rooted around a bit and found it actually installed properly on the usr/lib folder but actually had a .exe file (Oh no!). However, I was grateful that the utility was cleanly removed via Synaptic Package Manager.
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