MS Downgrades free Onedrive storage, ends unlimited for Office 365 Office

BunnyJ said:

Now that stinks.. thank goodness there's other places like Google drive.

My thoughts exactly, Jeff! Although I probably won't need more than 1 TB, but if I do . . .

Winuser said:

Yeah, I just reread it. I was going by what it said at the bottom of the page. I haven't completely woke up yet. I hate it when the time changes. It's only 1 hour but it usually takes me about a week to get adjusted.

Yeah, but I adjust the other way . . . I'm used to waking up between 6:00 and 7:00 but now it's between 5:00 and 6:00.

Winuser said:

I sitting here thinking about the changes to Onedrive MS is going to make. I can understand MS eliminating the unlimited plan because of the abuse from a few users. What does this have to do with the 15 GB free storage and the 15 GB Camera Role bonus? IMO (getting out my tin foil hat) This was a plan of MS to get users to store large amounts of data to Onedrive. Then come up with a excuse to cut the amount of free storage so they can start charging users that are either hooked on Ondrive or don't want to go through the hassel of downloading all the data they up loaded. (tin foil hat removed)

I think part of it is that they need their cloud storage for other things. Such as work from the cloud stuff. And no, I don't understand all I've heard about it.

Wynona said:

Here's Ed Bott's article on ZDNet

Microsoft reneges on 'unlimited' OneDrive storage promise for Office 365 subscribers | ZDNet

I did chuckle at the first line

Scrooge McDuck is now in charge of Microsoft's consumer cloud division.

10/27/14 Ed Bott of ZDNet:

In the latest salvo in the cloud storage price wars, Microsoft has uncapped OneDrive storage space for Office 365 subscribers. The unlimited storage option tosses the ball back into Google's court and puts even more pressure on independent cloud storage services like Dropbox and Box.

When this was announced a year or so ago, I'm pretty sure it was to make 365 subscriptions much more attractive. What Microsoft obviously didn't expect was just how attractive those subscriptions would become.

Microsoft blames a few greedy storage users for the change in heart. "A small number of users," they wrote, "backed up numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings. In some instances, this exceeded 75 TB per user or 14,000 times the average."


That shouldn't be surprising. If you advertise "unlimited" cloud storage, perhaps you should expect that some people will take you at your word and move large collections to the storage space you so generously offered? Did no one consider the possibility that some customers with large digital media collections would find this offer insanely attractive?

Suddenly, unlimited OneDrive storage made the $69.00 per year for personal (one computer) and $99.00 per year for Home subscriptions (five computers & 5 tablets) much more attractive. Quite frankly, I don't consider those "greedy" users who merely took Microsoft at its word greedy at all. Why would anyone ever think they'd max out Microsoft's servers when Microsoft said . . .

FWIW, a subscription to Microsoft Office 365 2012 Home ($99.00) can be installed on five computers (PC or Mac) and 5 tablets. You get 1 TB each for up to five users. So, in essence, you get 5 TB of OneDrive storage per household.

What I don't understand is why Microsoft has changed storage limits/pricing for OneDrive that comes built into Windows 10. That, to me, is just nutso. Uh oh, there I go putting down Microsoft! Unless, of course, MS wants those using the free storage to subscribe to Office 365 2016.

Since I have O365 ProPlus (Business), I was interested in this one:

At the same time it made the consumer OneDrive announcements, Microsoft also told its Office 365 business and enterprise subscribers that they could expect unlimited storage in OneDrive for Business.

This is the next to last paragraph in Ed Bott's ZXNet article.

I had about 15gb of my favorite songs on One Drive to play on Groove Music app, once I found out it kind of sucked, moved the tunes to Google Drive and now play them in the Google Music Play app, ton's better in every way.

I still have a few documents and desktop backgrounds on my One Drive, so I am ok in regards to them cutting back the available free storage space.

Terry

Here's some more: Microsofts OneDrive changes are a senseless overreaction to a problem it created