Some of you might remember the XDrive service launched by Apple in the mid 90's. It was designed initially to beat out and form a more "exclusive" community among Apple owners. File sharing, back in those days, were still a new idea and not many PC owners knew what to do with them. But the almighty Apple owners quickly developed the idea of community common files anything ranging from Mac OS updates/hacks to picture and movie sharing.
Well, it's back! http://www.xdrive.com ,now fully funded and backed by AOL, is providing free 5GB to anyone who signs up. You can either create a new AOL-AIM account or use your currently existing AIM account. The interface is either a simple HTML browser to upload/download files or JAVA console to make your experience more pleasant.
But it is still "exclusive" to those only own AIM/AOL account. This means files can only shared by those who are invited via email. The recipient does not necessary has to have an AOL email address.
The idea is not new but the name XDrive carries much deserved respect when it comes to good storage for all your file types. However, it is still many months before they can make it running smoothly. For the past 4 hours I have tried to upload few files, I faced numerous errors and was asked to refresh the page (Ctrl-R) to view all items in my xdrive. And the interface (in HTML form) must be refreshed when I move from one folder to another--very redundant. It's is the first thing XDrive team must re-develop if they want this service to make it into a main stream online file storage competition.
For AOL email account users, all your email attachments can be automatically uploaded to your xdrive. This is very cool! So many people who do not want to delete attachments or attachments saved in the local drive can have the option of storing attachments off site.
And the Xdrive offers another option--using Xdrive as a virtual drive. An optional desktop solution can have your Xdrive exist like a physical drive in My Computer and can be used to synchronize/backup selected files automatically or as a drag and drop storage solution.
