If you have a Gmail account or use any of Google’s services like Android or the Chrome browser, then you should be familiar with the Google Drive. Google Drive is a service for synchronization through the cloud. It is a product from Google which means that it is linked with all of the online services of Google comprising of the Chrome browser, Android, Gmail, and the online office applications of Google (which was formerly referred to as Google Docs and now known as Google Drive).
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A tool for file synchronization is what the basic form of Google Drive is. However, most Google Drive reviews will confirm that it also has some additional extras which are ideal for assisting you with any cloud-based work.
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Google Drive price and storage
- Free Offer – The Google drive free offering rivals even their competitors’ best offerings. For just owning a Google account you get 15GB for free.
- Paid storage – the paid storage versions of Google Docs Drive is cheap in an incredible way. The cost of 100GB of storage is $1.99 a month. This is a price that is so incredibly small. Their closest rival OneDrive is attempting to close the gap but at 100GB costing almost twice the Google drive price, it would still have a long way to go. More impressive is that for $9.99 every month, any user of Google drive can get 1TB of storage space. This is higher than the physical hard disk space that exists on many desktops and laptops. The limit of a file size on Google Drive is 1TB for any single file. This Google Drive Review seriously doubts if many people can exceed that.
The major caveat with all this space is that it is shared between your accounts on Google+ social network and Gmail, even though it is only large pictures uploaded to Google+ counts towards your storage limits. However, Google’s video sharing service YouTube is not counted in this total.
Google Drive Desktop app
The Google Drive desktop app for Windows and Mac is very easy to use and has a design that is simple. However, it still performs a lot of the things users would expect from it. There is really not much that needs to be done regarding how to use Google Drive on a desktop.
After you must have performed the Google Drive download on your computer, to get any file uploaded into the Drive would require you simply dragging and dropping it into the folder for Google Drive. Selective synchronization options are also available which enables you to select the particular folders that you want to update on each of the devices on which you choose to install Google drive.
If you modify a file on Google Drive desktop, it would be uploaded to the Cloud immediately, which makes sure that your files always reflect the most recent version. However, in order to share these files with your colleagues and friends from the Google Drive desktop interface, a user is likely to run into some complications.
In Windows Explorer, when you right-click on a file that was stored in Google Drive and select the button for “share” and with whom, a simple link is not provided for you to use. Even though some Google Drive reviews argue that it makes sure that there is no mistake in sharing a file in a way or with a person that it was not meant for, it is still a method that is a bit convoluted for a task which should be straightforward, easy, and simple.
Google Drive interface for the web
At http://drive.google.com any user can get to experience the real and raw power of Google Drive which is in its web interface. Here, all the files in your Google Drive are shown. Without having to open Microsoft Word or any other traditional desktop application you can also make edits to documents which are compatible. What this means is that you can actually edit and view a lot of files without having to use your home or office PC.
In 2014, an update was made by Google to its mobile and web services whereby users could make edits to .xlsx and .docx Microsoft Office format files within Google Drive without the need for any conversions to a file format of Google first. Equally available now are apps which are web-based for spreadsheet and editing images, documents, software for presentation, and tools for creating surveys and web forms. When compared to OpenDrive and Microsoft Office they are very stripped down but are extremely excellent for performing tasks on projects that are quite simple.
Google Drive apps for mobile
Although there are not too many of them, the tablet and smartphone Google Drive apps are amazingly great. Any smartphone or tablet user can install Google Drive app software on devices that run on Android, iPads, and iPhones. However, users of Windows Phone and BlackBerry will have to entrust the management of their Google Drive to third-party applications.
The Google Drive apps perform better when a user has internet connectivity. However files can be individually selected to be offline.
Conclusion
Google Drive is definitely the Cloud storage service that offers the best value in terms of additional extras and the quantity of storage available. Collaboration and sharing are also its great strengths. And the price at which it is offered makes it even more competitive than its closest rivals like OneDrive and Box. Once you understand how to use Google drive I am sure you would not want to use any other service.
