Google Drive is finally here after years of waiting! Just in time to jump to cloud syncing/storage bandwagon. Microsoft has released their new SkyDrive 2 days ago.

Dropbox now faces some serious competition. I am a paying Dropbox user (Dropbox Pro 50 (50GB plan) – USD$99/year) for almost 2 years now and I have used up about 95% of my storage space and I didn’t want to go to the Pro 100 (100GB plan) because at USD$199/year it is pretty expensive. I hope this competition will drive down the prices for Dropbox, if not I would have to switch to Google Drive or Microsoft SkyDrive.

Google Drive Features

• Create and collaborate. Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items.
• Store everything safely and access it anywhere (especially while on the go). All your stuff is just… there. You can access your stuff from anywhere—on the web, in your home, at the office, while running errands and from all of your devices. You can install Drive on your Mac or PC and can download the Drive app to your Android phone or tablet. We’re also working hard on a Drive app for your iOS devices. And regardless of platform, blind users can access Drive with a screen reader.
• Search everything. Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Let’s say you upload a scanned image of an old newspaper clipping. You can search for a word from the text of the actual article. We also use image recognition so that if you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip into Drive, you can later search for [grand canyon] and photos of its gorges should pop up. This technology is still in its early stages, and we expect it to get better over time.

Google Drive Price Plans

• 5GB – Free
• 25GB – USD$2.49/month – USD$29.88/year
• 100GB – USD$4.99/month – USD$59.88/year
• 1TB – USD$49.99/month – USD$599.88/year
• When you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB.

Microsoft SkyDrive Price Plans

• 7GB – Free
• +20GB – USD$0.84/month – USD$10/year
• +50GB – USD$2.04/month – USD$25/year
• +100GB – USD$4.17/month – USD$50/year

Dropbox Price Plans

• 2GB – Free
• 50GB – USD$9.99/month – USD$99.99/year
• 100GB – USD$19.99/month – USD$199.99/year

If you are not too sure whether is Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive or even Dropbox is suitable for you, check out the following articles:

• The Verge: Google Drive vs. Dropbox, SkyDrive, SugarSync, and others: a cloud sync storage face-off
• Engadget: Google Drive vs. the competition: pricing plans and perks, compared
• Gizmodo: Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox and More Compared: What’s the Best Cloud Option?

Official Blog Post: Introducing Google Drive… yes, really

Microsoft Windows 8 Consumer Preview has been released!

Key Updates In This Consumer Preview

• Broad range of product changes and improvements. Since the Developer Preview in September, designed to preview the programming platform, Windows 8 has progressed across every dimension. From completing the user experience for touch, keyboard and mouse to refining the development platform, the Consumer Preview improves performance, quality and reliability across all subsystems. With the added features, it represents a more complete view of the capabilities of Windows 8.
• Windows Store with new apps. The Windows 8 Consumer Preview marks the beta opening of the Windows Store, which is filled with a variety of new Metro style apps from both third-party developers and Microsoft. During the Consumer Preview, these apps are available to try and experience at no cost to users. The Windows Store will offer personalized recommendations, and Windows 8 gives users the ability to take their apps and settings with them across multiple PCs, making it easy to discover and try new apps while offering developers the greatest opportunity of any platform.
• Connecting to the cloud across Windows-based PCs and Windows Phone. The Windows 8 Consumer Preview offers seamless integration with the content people care about across their devices. An optional additional sign-on with a Microsoft account provides access to a host of features, including the ability to roam all settings, use cloud storage, communicate with email, calendar and contacts, and connect to a broad range of services. Your connection to the cloud works across your Windows-based PCs and your Windows Phones.
• Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 5. The best way to experience the Web on Windows is with Internet Explorer 10. The browser has been re-imagined to create a new experience designed specifically for Windows 8 devices. It provides an edge-to-edge user interface that is all about less browser and more Web. Fast and fluid, Internet Explorer is hardware-accelerated to enable Web performance.
• Preview of new hardware capabilities. At the event, Microsoft also showcased Windows 8 running on a wide range of new x86- and ARM-based reference hardware. This hardware will be available to select developers for trial and testing as previously announced.

Hardware Specifications

• 1 GHz or faster processor
• 1 GB RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
• 1024 x 768 minimum screen resolution

Direct Download Links

• English – 64-bit (x64) (3.3 GB) [sha1: 1288519C5035BCAC83CBFA23A33038CCF5522749]
• English – 32-bit (x86) (2.5 GB) [sha1: E91ED665B01A46F4344C36D9D88C8BF78E9A1B39]
• Product Key: DNJXJ-7XBW8-2378T-X22TX-BKG7J

Press Release: Microsoft Announces Availability of Windows 8 Consumer Preview
Blog Post: Introducing Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Microsoft Singapore officially launches Windows Phone 7.5 yesterday. Windows Phone 7.5 has more than 500 new features and enhancements.

Both HTC Radar (RRP: SGD$569) and Samsung Omnia W (RRP: SGD$498) will be the first Windows Phone 7.5 to be released in Singapore. The HTC Radar will be available next month (October 2011) while the Samsung Omnia W will be available sometime in Q4 2011.

The Mango release is available for free to all Windows Phone 7 customers. Microsoft will begin delivery of the update to existing Windows Phone 7 users from today and gradually ramp up delivery so that the update will be broadly available to most existing customers by the end of October 2011.

Based on the official site, Where’s my phone update?, both SingTel and StarHub are in the status of “Delivering update” which means:

Microsoft has started to send out the update. Important: To help ensure quality, software updates are typically sent out gradually and/or in batches, so it might take several weeks before you receive notice that an update is available for your phone.

Official Site: Windows Phone 7.5
Official Status Page: Where’s my phone update?
Press Release (Windows Phone 7.5): Microsoft Puts People First With The Launch Of The Latest Version Of Windows Phone In Singapore
Press Release (HTC Radar): HTC Unveils HTC Radar, HTC’s First Windows Phone 7 With Mango Update
Press Release (Samsung Omnia W): Samsung delivers a unique experience with Omnia W, a smartphone that puts people first

The last time we saw a preview of Windows 8 was during Computex back on 2nd June 2011. Yesterday at the BUILD conference, Microsoft showcased Microsoft Windows 8 Developer Preview.

The new Metro UI look awesome, hopefully this time round, Microsoft will make the UI consistent throughout the whole Windows. Microsoft has learned from their mistake and the Metro UI is now built for touch rather than mouse from the group up. It is just wrong slapping a touch UI to Windows 7, it just does not work.

Smilar to OS X Lion, Windows 8 will have its own App Store for you to buy software. I hope the software prices are reasonably priced. Windows 8 also supports ARM-based chipsets. In the press release, they did mentioned “One Windows”, I am hoping they meant there is only one edition of Windows 8 and not so many editions like its predecessors, it just confuse the crap out of consumers.

You can try out the Microsoft Windows 8 Developer Preview for free (no activation is required), just head to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229516/ and download the ISO. The x64 variant is 3.6GB and x86 one is 2.8GB.

Here are some highlights extracted from the press release:

Touch-First User Interface

• Metro style. Windows 8 introduces a new Metro style interface built for touch, which shows information important to you, embodies simplicity and gives you control. The Metro style UI is equally at home with a mouse and keyboard as well.
• Touch-first browsing, not just browsing on a touch device. Providing a fast and fluid touch-browsing experience, Internet Explorer 10 puts sites at the center on new Windows 8 devices.

More Ways to Engage With Powerful, Connected Apps

• Powered by apps. Metro style apps built for Windows 8 are the focal point of your experience, filling your entire screen so there are no distractions.
• Apps can work together. Apps communicate with each other in Windows 8. For example, you can easily select and email photos from different places, such as Facebook, Flickr or on your hard drive.
• Your experience syncs across your devices. Live roams all the content from the cloud services you use most – photos, email, calendar and contacts – keeping them up-to-date on your devices. With SkyDrive, you can access your files, photos and documents from virtually anywhere with any browser or with Metro style apps in Windows 8.

Enhanced Fundamentals

• The best of Windows 7, only better. Windows 8 is built on the rock-solid foundation of Windows 7, delivering improvements in performance, security, privacy and system reliability. Windows 8 reduces the memory footprint needed – even on the lowest-end hardware – leaving more room for your apps.
• Preserving power-user favorites and making them better. For those who push the limits of their PC, Windows 8 features an enhanced Task Manager and Windows Explorer and new, flexible options for multimonitor setups.

New Developer Opportunities

• Windows Store. The Windows Store will allow developers to sell their apps anywhere Windows is sold worldwide, whether they’re creating new games or familiar productivity tools.
• Build using more languages. Windows 8 lets you leverage your existing skills and code assets to create great experiences using the programming language you prefer.
• Rich hardware integration leads to richer experiences – particularly for games. DirectX 11 gaming power underlies Windows 8, allowing the easy creation of full-screen games with smooth, flicker-free action.

New Generation of Hardware

• One Windows – many shapes and sizes. Support for ARM-based chipsets, x86 (as well as x32 and x64) devices, touch and sensors means Windows 8 works beautifully across a spectrum of devices, from 10-inch tablets and laptops to all-in-ones with 27-inch high-definition screens.
• Always connected. With Windows 8, new ultrathin PCs and tablets turn on instantly, run all day on a single charge and stay connected to the Internet so your PC is ready when you are. Next-generation system on a chip (SoC) support will also enable greatly extended standby and low-power states.
• Tap the full power of your PC. Windows 8 runs on PCs and is compatible with the devices and programs you use today on Windows 7, without compromise, to deliver the performance you expect of a PC.

Lock Screen

Start Screen

App Screen Showacasing Keyboard

Press Release: Microsoft Reimagines Windows, Presents Windows 8 Developer Preview

Windows 8 Start

TAIPEI, Taiwan – June 2, 2011 – At 2011 Computex today, Microsoft Corp. showed hardware partners the next version of Windows, internally code-named “Windows 8″, to help the partners build devices that take advantage of the new user experience. As part of this technical preview, Mike Angiulo, corporate vice president of Windows Planning, Hardware and PC Ecosystem at Microsoft, demonstrated how “Windows 8″ is optimized for newer touch-centric hardware, including tablets, while still delivering the flexibility, connectivity and power that people have come to expect from Windows today.

The technical demonstration also highlighted the new operating system’s ability to work across both x86 and ARM-based architectures, with a variety of early prototypes shown running the new operating system. Microsoft and silicon chip makers AMD, Intel Corporation, NVIDIA Corp., Qualcomm Inc. and Texas Instruments Inc. initially announced plans in January to work together on the next version of Windows.

“Our aim with ‘Windows 8′ is to make the user experience a natural extension of the device, from the time you turn on your PC through how you interact with the applications you know and love,” Angiulo said. “This represents a fundamental shift in Windows design that we haven’t attempted since the days of Windows 95, presenting huge opportunities for our hardware partners to innovate with new PC designs.”

The new user experience also extends to how applications will run on “Windows 8″, with controls naturally fitting into the device experience. Developers also will be able to use common Web technologies, such as HTML5 and JavaScript, to create applications for the PC, further easing integration and adoption.

To aid developers in building applications for the new operating system, Microsoft formally opened registration for its new developer conference, BUILD. The conference will take place Sept. 13–16, 2011, in Anaheim, Calif. More information and online registration for BUILD is available at http://www.buildwindows.com.

Press Release: Microsoft Previews ‘Windows 8′