Google Drive Review & Installation Walk-Through Highlights.

 

Google Drive taking over cloud storage?!… users will decide that.

Google Drive is the new kid on the block in file syncing and cloud drive storage market.  I’m hoping it will take everything good that Dropbox does and do it better, faster & cheaper.  Knowing Google, they might just do that.

This will most likely be the case for Android users.  I’m an iPhone user and will have to wait for a native iOS app to arrive.  The following is the first steps installing and running Google Drive for the first time…

The email arrived two days after I requested an invite…

I promptly clicked the “Take me to Google Drive” button.

 

Google Drive Installation

A brief hello screen offers to install a computer based app via Google Drive Installer.  I opted to do this and would suggest it for automatic sync-ing to your computer.

Asks you to sign in using your current Google login…

I recommend clicking the advanced options to select what files it syncs to where.

It creates a special folder called “Google Drive” under your User in Windows.  Shows same Google File Type icons as online (1), (2) Date Modified, (3) File Size.  basic stuff.

I already had files and folders in my Google Docs that automatically show up here now as seen above.

 

Google Drive Online Interface

The online portion is similar to the Google Docs interface…

Google Drive Document Management & Live Update

See live updates of everything you and others have modified…

I can see that Amy updated the file represented in BOLD at 9:56am this morning.  After I open the file, view the updates and exit back out I’ll see the file name is not bold any longer. (see below) Indicating no changes have been made since I last viewed the file.

 

 

Time will tell in how it stacks up against Dropbox and SkyDrive, but looks promising so far.

 

Please comment your thoughts and any tips you have on getting the most out of Google Drive, thanks!