Could eliminate having to carry a laptop/external hard drives for some short trips. Definitely not a solution though for long trips or shorter ones that are in a target-rich environment, although it would still help some even for those. I typically carry a laptop plus two 500GB ext hd's. for storage. Also, the time to download 100GB of photos onto a desktop could be a limiting factor on usefulness.
Posted by Paul DeCesare on March 31, 2013 at 12:14 AM
I'm in, thanks Don!
Posted by Paul DeCesare on March 31, 2013 at 12:27 AM
BTW, Good to know:
Free Licenses
If you have a Free Account, Zoolz may terminate your account and these Terms immediately and without notice if your computer fails to access the Services to perform a backup for more than thirty (30) days or you fail to comply with these Terms. You agree that Zoolz's policy is to automatically delete all of your Backed-up Data upon termination or expiration and that it is solely your responsibility to seek another source for your backup needs. You have also waived rights in receiving Technical support.
SO, use upload or download something once a month and you'll be OK. Also, the upload speed for free accounts is limited to 1Mbps which is pretty slow by 2013 standards. Remember the whole point is to get us to pay for an upgraded eperience, and they're yanking us in with that free 100GB chunk. If you sign up PLEASE do not make this the only place you store your images. But it is the most amount of free Cloud space I've seen offered, worth considering. Tread carefully!
Posted by Scott Fricke on March 31, 2013 at 12:33 PM
That's a very telling paragraph Paul posted, especially the last sentence, "You have also waived rights in receiving Technical support." I would never do business with a company that has a philosophy this company does. I know they are offering something for free, but we all know it is simply a hook to get you to buy more storage, so why would you as a company not also want to show what great customer service you have to potential customers? Unless of course, your service sucks... Everyone knows the best advertising is word-of-mouth and how can you recommend a company to a friend when they provide no customer support to it's startup customers?
I'm foreseeing a scenario where after a year or so all of a sudden you won't be able to access your account, and since you "waived" your right to technical support, you are either forced to purchase an account or abandon the service, just the cynic in me... You get what you pay for.
Never thought about using it for long term storage, strictly short-term storage while on a trip before downloading to my own 3TB external hd at home. The person who told me about it said it took him 24 hours to upload 30GB to their site and he could download 7GB per hour.
The 30 day backup thing should be easy enough to accomplish, you could just send a 1GB file each month just to stay active. And that 1GB file could be the same file over and over again if I don't take enough trips to make it work per month. Just place a reminder sticky-note on my monitor!
As far as long-term cloud storage goes, I would never trust any company to be my only backup. They could go out of business!
By the way, I have no financial, or otherwise, connection with this company, just passing along some info from a computer oriented friend who also has no financial, or otherwise interest in it. Informational purposes only, no recommendation intended.
Posted by Scott Fricke on March 31, 2013 at 2:02 PM
I can certainly see the possible benefit for short-term storage. What I have done during trips is use the Go To My PC service (costs $79.95/year), which creates a virtual desktop on your laptop (or any other computer you may have access to), so I can download files to my desktop at home in addition to a portable hard drive I take with me, that way I can have chosen files backed up in 3 locations. And my desktop computer does automatic backups to another hard drive, so I get another layer of back up.
Go To My PC sounds like a great idea, but don't you have to keep your home computer turned on at all times? I turn mine off whenever I'll be gone for more than a couple of hours. We have a power surge or outage on a regular basis here in Woodland Park which, besides the benefits of energy conservation, is another reason to not leave my computer on.
Posted by Scott Fricke on April 1, 2013 at 2:40 AM
You do have to leave it on, I have a Mac, and I just put it in sleep mode to minimize the energy drain, I don't know if PC's do the same. Accessing the computer through Go To My PC will wake the computer from sleep mode. My computer is on a surge protector and I haven't had a problem to date. But I certainly don't have any experience with your area (I did live in the Springs till a few months ago, but Woodland Park is probably a different story) so can't speak to that. I've been using it for 2 years so far. The other nice thing is you can also retrieve files from your home computer and transfer them to wherever you are.
Discussion
7 repliesCould eliminate having to carry a laptop/external hard drives for some short trips. Definitely not a solution though for long trips or shorter ones that are in a target-rich environment, although it would still help some even for those. I typically carry a laptop plus two 500GB ext hd's. for storage. Also, the time to download 100GB of photos onto a desktop could be a limiting factor on usefulness.
SO, use upload or download something once a month and you'll be OK. Also, the upload speed for free accounts is limited to 1Mbps which is pretty slow by 2013 standards. Remember the whole point is to get us to pay for an upgraded eperience, and they're yanking us in with that free 100GB chunk. If you sign up PLEASE do not make this the only place you store your images. But it is the most amount of free Cloud space I've seen offered, worth considering. Tread carefully!
I'm foreseeing a scenario where after a year or so all of a sudden you won't be able to access your account, and since you "waived" your right to technical support, you are either forced to purchase an account or abandon the service, just the cynic in me... You get what you pay for.
The 30 day backup thing should be easy enough to accomplish, you could just send a 1GB file each month just to stay active. And that 1GB file could be the same file over and over again if I don't take enough trips to make it work per month. Just place a reminder sticky-note on my monitor!
As far as long-term cloud storage goes, I would never trust any company to be my only backup. They could go out of business!
By the way, I have no financial, or otherwise, connection with this company, just passing along some info from a computer oriented friend who also has no financial, or otherwise interest in it. Informational purposes only, no recommendation intended.