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Comment by tiles | Hacker News Reader

"SkyDrive is now the default location for saving documents. So you always have your files wherever you go, even when you’re offline. And with the included SkyDrive app, you can manage both local files and SkyDrive files in one place."

This is a massive play for cloud storage. Will this be replacing "My Documents" for the majority of casual Windows users?

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And it looks like it will be a massive annoyance for the user, kind of like how OS X now insists on showing me iCloud first every time I save a document, despite the fact that I have never stored any document in iCloud and have no intention of ever doing so.

Annoying, but `defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSDocumentSaveNewDocumentsToCloud -bool false`

You are awesome, thank you. That worked great. :)

thank you good sir!

I want to hug you so hard right now.

Why an annoyance? For most users it will look and behave just like a normal folder.

It will be annoying if they do it like OS X, where they always default to that folder and give you no way to turn it off other than waiting for some kind soul on Hacker News to tell you the magic command line incantation. :)

I mean, I assume that even if it behaves like a regular folder, unless the user actually wants to store the file on SkyDrive, then that folder would not be where they want to save the thing.

I actually even store most document-y stuff on Dropbox, which made Apple's whole "iCloud? Wanna save that on iCloud? Put it in the iCloud? What, Dropbox, you sure you didn't mean iCloud? iCloud? Hey, try saving it in iCloud! Look, iCloud! Woah, by Dropbox, I think you meant iCloud, right? iCloud? iCloud?" behavior so annoying...

Nah, you're not seeing it like a normal user. I work in an office with non technical people and they NEVER know where they saved something. They just always use the program's default. My whole family except me does this as well. For the average person its a life saver if every program always defaults to SkyDrive. Now they only need to remember one or two folders ever to look for stuff. SkyDrive and Downloads. Now if they could just get downloads to go straight to SkyDrive then normal people will be set.

Until they forget their password to Hotmail/Live/Outlook.com (whatever it's called) again.

I find Hotmail's password length terrible and its recovery process tedious.

> Until they forget their password to Hotmail/Live/Outlook.com (whatever it's called) again.

There's no separate password. You log in to Microsoft/Live when you log in to your computer. If your computer is on, you have access to SkyDrive. If you forgot the password to unlock the whole computer, SkyDrive is not the top of your concerns.

You used to be able to run a startup disk/startup CD to reset the administrator account password on most home PCs, though. That probably won't work as well when the account's in 'the cloud'?

I see, I misunderstood.

That's not too bad if done that way. Although I hope I don't get locked out by someone trying to log into my outlook account. It got to be so bad with Hotmail I only use it as an email for my Xbox account.

Doesn't it just default to 'My Documents' now? This doesn't sound a lot different.

Go to System Preferences > iCloud > Uncheck the option "Documents & Data" to change it via the GUI.

I believe that will actually disable the syncing of that data entirely, which probably isn't what you want because some apps rely on that sync.

But nixme's command-line tip above works to specifically fix the annoyance of having save dialogs always start with iCloud, while still allowing you to have it sync all that data.

Again, how would a normal user even notice. As far as they're concerned its a local folder, like the documents folder today.

The only password they need is the one to log into their computer.

What about other programs that save there that are only tangentially documents. I'm thinking of things like saved game files which can often be upwards of 500MB and depending on the size of SkyDrive could fill it up quickly leading to documents not syncing. Or if some files (such as saved games) don't transfer that sounds like a recipe for user confusion.

As someone who has ~20 kbps upload speed this news is very frustrating. :(

It should still work like a normal folder, even if you're offline, no?

Sure. You can save files locally (SkyDrive is not compulsory) or you can have SkyDrive automatically sync docs on all your PCs and/or Macs.

But if you are creating documents online using the Office Web Apps in SkyDrive, then it would be very odd if the default storage was a local PC, tablet or phone.

All these things are true today under Windows 7 and 8 as well as 8.1.

If cloud storage is such a terrible idea, it seems odd that there is so much hype for Google Apps -- which apparently 100% of startups use -- and for Chromebooks and similar thin client operating systems.

You definitely don't have to let it waste your bandwidth if you don't want to use it. You can:

a) Tell SkyDrive not to start on startup

b) Remove that folder from syncing

c) Tell SkyDrive not to sync on metered networks and set your home connection as a metered network

d) Save documents to a different folder

e) Uninstall SkyDrive

This is usually the point where someone comes and says:

a) Install a FOSS OS instead

At what point, I wonder, does that cease to be a snarky response? We are now apparently at the point where you have to jump through hoops to save your own files on your own computer.

It's not Windows 8.1 that's bothering me so much as projecting what this path looks like in Windows 10.

At what point? Not sure. Some years ago now, I think. When did Vista launch?

OSes have always catered for the majority use case. A few years ago, no-one had the internet connection to do file syncing like this- and storage was too expensive anyway.

Now both of those barriers have been removed and the OS is now taking advantage of these new capabilities. I really don't see what is wrong with that. Should all OSes remain frozen at a 2003 state of development?

"Now both of those barriers have been removed"

...in some places in the world, but not others. Will MS change their defaults by territory does anyone know?

eh? These are possible options not every single one of them solves the "problem". You don't have to do all of them. Besides, Skydrive is a local folder with throttled upload. So you save immediately and it eventually ends up on the server. So it's not like you will have to wait until it uploads.

On the other hand, you shouldn't upload anything illegal or even objectionable, Microsoft is looking (it probably has to) http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/court-record...

I think doing any of the five options the parent post listed (doing one of them is enough, no need to do all five) is easier than installing an operating system. This is why it's still a snarky response.

For Joe Average Windows user, I think this is a good move.

For everyone else, I think we've probably already got our own system for online doc backups etc. I'm sure, like past Microsoft products, we can probably change the behaviour through a registry "hack"/modification if they don't have something a bit more configurable built in (ie: in Control Panel etc).

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