Cloud Storage done right

I am a big fan of DropBox as it makes cloud storage as easy to use as a local folder. The additional features of version control, and P2P so that syncs between desktops and laptops are lightning fast are simple brilliantly executed: easy to use and worry free. However, at $200 a year for 100GByte it simply is too expensive for use as a real cloud storage/back up/access everywhere kinda solution. Desktops have been in the 1TB range for some time and thus a cloud solution that can't handle that is not properly designed. Instead, consumers and small businesses are better suited with the more cost effective external USB drives. $200 for 2TB is pretty standard so you can backup several machines on a single drive.

But last week TrendMicro release SafeSync. Their feature set is spot on, and their pricing is where cloud storage needs to be: unlimited storage for $60 per year, $30 right now for existing TrendMicro customers. That is much cheaper than an external drive, its covers all your machines, provides automatic backups, and synchronizes file sets if desired. This is the way cloud storage is supposed to work, and TrendMicro has been smart to realize that. I have been using the service for a couple of days, and I am loving it.