AOL to Offer 5GB of Online Storage

[Slimy]

AOL on Thursday announced it would begin offering all Web users 5GB of online storage through its Xdrive product, part of the company's new initiative to make its services available without cost. Separately, AOL said it plans to cut 5,000 jobs.

Through Xdrive, individuals can back up files like photos, documents, music, videos, and more. Uploaded content can be access through any PC or mobile device with a Web connection, AOL said. Users can even share files with others, as well as automatically upload e-mail attachments.

AOL will not charge users for the service, which is currently priced at $10 per month. The free Xdrive will be available to anyone with an AOL or AIM screen name starting next month.

A premium offering with 50GB of storage will be available to those needing more space for a fee that has yet to be announced.

"People are accumulating personal digital assets at a fast pace, especially in areas like digital photos and videos," said AOL Digital Services president John McKinley. "Yet our in-home research shows that few people are taking steps to protect their digital memories from accidental loss or destruction."

Xdrive will join a number of other AOL services that the company plans to make available to non-subscribers in September. The company plans to continue offering its subscription dial-up service, but will no longer aggressive market it to consumers.

The charges will affect AOL's workforce of about 19,000 employees. 5,000 layoffs are expected to take place within the next six months, with notifications expected in October. AOL is also looking to sell its Internet access businesses in France, Germany and the UK.

Source

[Randolph]

AOL must be really desperate to keep users from leaving them. :rolleyes:

[benac]

AOL must be really desperate to keep users from leaving them.

Indeed they must be.

To be honest i would rather just use my 2 g-mail accounts or @live.com accounts and e-mail the data to my account, rather than deal with AOL services.

[virtualmadden]

Free AOL and free 5GB storage, not bad. I don't use AOL, but my mom still does. Everyone might not like AOL, but it might be worth keeping an eye on them in the next year to see if they can clean up their image now that they are instituting a new business model.

[Spielo]

AOL must be really desperate to keep users from leaving them. :rolleyes:

I'm sure they are, but seeing as this service will be open to everyone who signs up for a free AIM screen name, it's in no way an incentive for their customers to keep subscribing.

[Lasker]

hehehehe, I remember the day in which I suspend my account with aol, it was a nighmare, I will never ever again deal with aol, I would be crazy

[virtualmadden]

I'm sure they are, but seeing as this service will be open to everyone who signs up for a free AIM screen name, it's in no way an incentive for their customers to keep subscribing.

Doesn't matter to AOL as they are free anyway. The only reason to pay AOL any money is for maybe support if they offer it, for those that need it, or for dial up.

[LOC Veteran]

AOL must be really desperate to keep users from leaving them. :rolleyes:

They may be desperate to stop the bleed from their Dialup services yes, but their certainly in a terrific position to offer awesome free services to everyone now.

The fact that they just opened up almost all of their AOL services for free is awesome. 5gb on Xdrive? Free XM Radio? AOL Mail? Free AIM Number things so you get unlimited incoming calls? Yeah, AOL sucks alright. :p

I love what AOL is doing. They are starting to position themselves in a very good manner here with the average tech user. Sure there are plenty of people who are on the "AOL sucks" bandwagon, who infact have probably NEVER used any of their software. I mean the whole "oh noes 2 or 3 extra processes" crack is worthless these days. If you can't accept the fact that AOL is offering awesome stuff for free now, then I guess I'm sorry. Maybe it's just me and bangbang023 :D

But rants aside, offering 5 gb of free space...for free is terrific. Box.net offers 5 gb also, but you gotta pay for it (or get 10 or 15 people to sign up under you) along with the other big online storage places...you still gotta pay for it. Now AOL comes along and says .... here here's 5 gb, enjoy! I sure will. :)

[Randolph]

They may be desperate to stop the bleed from their Dialup services yes, but their certainly in a terrific position to offer awesome free services to everyone now.

The fact that they just opened up almost all of their AOL services for free is awesome. 5gb on Xdrive? Free XM Radio? AOL Mail? Free AIM Number things so you get unlimited incoming calls? Yeah, AOL sucks alright. :p

I love what AOL is doing. They are starting to position themselves in a very good manner here with the average tech user. Sure there are plenty of people who are on the "AOL sucks" bandwagon, who infact have probably NEVER used any of their software. I mean the whole "oh noes 2 or 3 extra processes" crack is worthless these days. If you can't accept the fact that AOL is offering awesome stuff for free now, then I guess I'm sorry. Maybe it's just me and bangbang023 :D

But rants aside, offering 5 gb of free space...for free is terrific. Box.net offers 5 gb also, but you gotta pay for it (or get 10 or 15 people to sign up under you) along with the other big online storage places...you still gotta pay for it. Now AOL comes along and says .... here here's 5 gb, enjoy! I sure will. :)

Ok I understand your post. But this isn't what I understand?

I mean the whole "oh noes 2 or 3 extra processes" crack is worthless these days.

I need to be exact on this LOC. AOL 9.0 SE uses exactly ATLEAST 6-8 processes on my machine when installed. I run a very good setup. No spyware, NO startup entries, etc. With AOL 9.0 SE installed: my computer boots up INCREDIBLY slow. I don't even want to discuss my moms 3-4 year old laptop with this nonsense installed because you get the point. What I am saying is I am truly am glad AOL is making this move with making their services FREE...but I just don't see how this will help AOL in any way if their products are bloated and slow down the users system. :huh:

[Frank]

Ok I understand your post. But this isn't what I understand?

I need to be exact on this LOC. AOL 9.0 SE uses exactly ATLEAST 6-8 processes on my machine when installed. I run a very good setup. No spyware, NO startup entries, etc. With AOL 9.0 SE installed: my computer boots up INCREDIBLY slow. I don't even want to discuss my moms 3-4 year old laptop with this nonsense installed because you get the point. What I am saying is I am truly am glad AOL is making this move with making their services FREE...but I just don't see how this will help AOL in any way if their products are bloated and slow down the users system. :huh:

I don't think (I have been known to be wrong on occasion) that AOL will be offering up access to their software for free. I believe for this they will still charge. I think most of their Free Aps can be used with no download at all (IE: Webmail, AIM, etc.).

[RootWind]

I don't think (I have been known to be wrong on occasion) that AOL will be offering up access to their software for free. I believe for this they will still charge. I think most of their Free Aps can be used with no download at all (IE: Webmail, AIM, etc.).

No, all their software is free. I switched my dad and aunt over today. It was amazingly easy, took around five minutes. Basically you get everything you did before, except no tech support. (getting conflicting reports on whether you still get the higher bitrate with XM radio or not)

[Randolph]

No, all their software is free. I switched my dad and aunt over today. It was amazingly easy, took around five minutes. Basically you get everything you did before, except no tech support. (getting conflicting reports on whether you still get the higher bitrate with XM radio or not)

Huh? I thought the change won't be happening till early September?

[SULAX50]

Huh? I thought the change won't be happening till early September?

Orgininally that was the plan...w/o revealing too much, less the AOL censors shock me, we decided to bump up the start date to yesterday, what's the point of making people wait. You can sign up for a free account, and migrate your account as well. I will get into details tonight on my blog.

[Julius Caro]

Online storage is so 1999.

[Slimy]

Online storage is so 1999.

:laugh: and what's 2006?

[LOC Veteran]

Ok I understand your post. But this isn't what I understand?

I need to be exact on this LOC. AOL 9.0 SE uses exactly ATLEAST 6-8 processes on my machine when installed. I run a very good setup. No spyware, NO startup entries, etc. With AOL 9.0 SE installed: my computer boots up INCREDIBLY slow. I don't even want to discuss my moms 3-4 year old laptop with this nonsense installed because you get the point. What I am saying is I am truly am glad AOL is making this move with making their services FREE...but I just don't see how this will help AOL in any way if their products are bloated and slow down the users system. :huh:

Well on my system right now with AOL 9.0 installed it's running with 4 extra processes running. Granted I disabled a couple of them before, but I don't see any slow down whatsoever in general from running their software. Sure on occasion it's annoying to see the extra processes :p but it really doesn't bother me that much. If it bothers you or anyone else that much, just disable or end the task and that's it.

My point really was, give AOL's software a chance, try out their new stuff such as the Streamliner I mentioned before (still, very impressive stuff btw) and I'm pretty sure most people here would like it. Add the fact that it's totally free now and yeah. People love free here don't they :)

[Veedems Veteran]

Online storage is so 1999.

Yeah, because those dialup connections were so conducive to uploading large amounts of files. :rolleyes:

[ThePitt]

Thats great!. If we were in 1998 :p

[ambiance]

The only way I would use AOL storage is if they sent me an external HD for free.

[Julius Caro]

:laugh: and what's 2006?

Dunno lol. But back in the day all those online storage websites surfaced. All of it was used for warez purposes, so it didnt suceed. Not to mention:

1. People outgoing bandwidth it's still very slow compared to incoming bandwidth.

2. Storage isnt much of a problem lately. There's dvd's, pendrives, portable hard disks...

3. There's Gmail :p

[AQUaDeX]

I loved Xdrive, it's nice AOL bought them since it will never be free otherwise

[SULAX50]

I loved Xdrive, it's nice AOL bought them since it will never be free otherwise

In the end this is a great comment. Regardless how you feel toward AOL or AO-Hell as I see it referred to here sometimes, we bought a great company in X-Drive and are making it available free to ALL internet users. There are other examples of this across the Web 2.0 space, think about flickr or SketchUp.

[AQUaDeX]

In the end this is a great comment. Regardless how you feel toward AOL or AO-Hell as I see it referred to here sometimes, we bought a great company in X-Drive and are making it available free to ALL internet users. There are other examples of this across the Web 2.0 space, think about flickr or SketchUp.

Well I like Xdrive, I am a subscriber of both Xdrive and AOL (since I get AOL for $7 and Xdrive is half price with AOL account), but I do not like AOL especially its support, the most recent annoyance for me is AIM Digits, I signed up for a Digits but all of a sudden it got canceled 2 hours later, I tried to sign up again but the system won't let me anymore saying some unknown error, support offered no help and told me to just use another ScreenName "i.e. we don't really care", that's terrible.

[LOC Veteran]

Well I like Xdrive, I am a subscriber of both Xdrive and AOL (since I get AOL for $7 and Xdrive is half price with AOL account), but I do not like AOL especially its support, the most recent annoyance for me is AIM Digits, I signed up for a Digits but all of a sudden it got canceled 2 hours later, I tried to sign up again but the system won't let me anymore saying some unknown error, support offered no help and told me to just use another ScreenName "i.e. we don't really care", that's terrible.

Well then, no worries with the new AOL :p There's no support for the free services :D (at least not free support, maybe they will offer paid support, but I didn't read it)

[crimsonhead]

Dunno lol. But back in the day all those online storage websites surfaced. All of it was used for warez purposes, so it didnt suceed.

Yes, warez aren't stored on online storage websites anymore... :rolleyes: They send them first class to your doorstep.