This will be a little different post than my normal posts on enterprise IT.  This is along the lines of personal technology... Organizing your digital life!

One staple principle I was raised on growing up that stems from my farmer Grandfather is, work (labor) is next to Godliness and to do work as efficient as possible which allows you to do more work.  I have always been on-board with anything in our daily lives and technology coming to a fusion to make our lives easier and more efficient.  This could be your work life, your personal life, and digital life, especially when that digital life comes to content.  This is what technology is all about right?  I recall growing up in school where researching on the Internet was in its infancy.  But to be able to utilize those search engines to augment your manual research in encyclopedia's and at a library saved you time!  Fast forward 17 years later, I recently finished my bachelors degree, upgrading it from an associates.  I cannot believe how truly easy it is today to be a college student.  I literally never cracked a single physical book!  Boy, I am starting to sound like my farmer Grandfather!  "I remember when...".  

Recently Google merged their amount of free storage across all their services.  Before, it was separated, so those like me who took advantage of the two most popular Google services (Gmail and Drive), had separate buckets of storage for those services.  Gmail for me was 15gb, (I was in the beta program in 2006 and was alloted more storage than the general public).  And for my Google Drive, that was another 15gb.  I literally never worried about my storage on these Google services. Sometimes I would catch at the main screen of my Gmail that I was in the 40% range of used mailbox storage and the same is true for my Google Drive.  I have literally never deleted an email from my Gmail inbox.  That's ten years of email!  Its kind of funny to go back and look at some of them between friends and others from 10 years ago!  On my Google drive I have been keeping a very organized folder structure for my personal life for roughly the last  6 years.  Things from taxes, to pay stubs, to any important document.

I also became and adopter of Microsoft One Drive two years ago.  The reason for this was because at the time I had an Android smart phone, and I didnt want to backup my pictures from that device to my Google Drive which I foresaw eating up all my free 15gb space.  One Drive had a feature in it that automatically backed up the photos on your smart phone, and it also had 8gb of free storage, which I wa able to increase to 28gb of free storage by signing up for early offerings.  When I made the jump of smartphone platforms from Android to iPhone a couple years ago, I was pleased to see that many iPhone die-hards preferred to use the Microsoft One Drive app to backup their smarthpone photos over Apple's Cloud storage which has a reputation for being clunky.

I have always been a very seldom user of dropbox.  It was mostly for business and sharing of files between clients.  The problem with dropbox, is that it only offered 2gb free of storage which is not a lot in today's standards, and they seem to be the most expensive of the well known cloud storage providers on the market.

In the month of April 2016, everything came to a head.  I woke up one morning to warnings in my Gmail stating my space was almost full.  How could this be?  I have never noticed my Gmail space jump over 49%.  In fact, I dont even process that I would run out of space on my Gmail!  Even my Google drive was now warning me I was out of space!  I logged into my Google dashboard and the only thing I can piece together is that there is now one shared bucket of storage for all my Google services.  9GB of email, and 9GB of space consumed on my Google drive.  No longer are they separate buckets of storage.  #Frustrating!  Not to fear.  I will utilize my 28gb of Microsoft One Drive for my documents now.  I know I have only used 4gb of that storage, and I have been a long enough user of this service to know that it is rock solid.  That way, my Gmail can use all 15gb of free storage in the single bucket of storage Google is now consolidating me into.

Wait!!!  Two days later, I get an email from Microsoft!  They are now going to drop me into the general free bucket of storage that is 5gb.  AHHHHH!!!!!  #IAmAngryNow!!!  Google and Microsoft must be in this together!  So I am losing 23GB of precious free storage that I was given by Microsoft.  Now that my plan B is shot, its time to explore options.

The first thing I did was weigh what extra storage would cost for all these services.  Drop box is by far the most expensive at $10/mo for 1TB of storage.  Microsoft One Drive was second, and Google was the cheapest.  Im good with that, I dont mind paying $2/mo for 100gb of cloud storage (Google Drive) for my documents and pictures.  One problem.  The iPhone Google Drive app is clunky for automatically backing up pictures taken on the device.  Microsoft really works better for that.  But Microsoft is $4/mo for 50gb of storage. 

Enter Amazon Cloud drive.  Amazon has seen it fit to offer unlimited cloud storage for your pictures!  Thats perfect, since most of my storage is pictures anyway!  They even have a very simpe App for iOS and Android that automatically backs up pictures form your Smartphone to the cloud storage!  There is also free 5gb of storage for video or general files.  And get this... if you want to upgrade to unlimited storage for everything with Amazon, the cost is $60/yr.  Thats $5/mo.  So if you feel you will have more than 100gb of cloud storage needs, Amazon will be the cheapest solution.  Otherwise, Google drive is the cheapest solution for under 100gb of storage, however the device Apps on iOS can be clunky and on the iPhone, you have to use Google Docs to augment the Google Drive app, creating multiple apps you have to use for the service.

Here is how the pricing shakes out:

Dropbox: $1.00/mo per GB, minimum 1TB

Microsoft one Drive: $0.04  per GB, minimum 50gb

Google Drive: $0.02 per GB, minimum 100gb

Amazon Cloud Drive: Free for pictures.  Unlimited for $60 per year

As for me, I am utilizing my 15gb of free Google drive storage for the time being, and the Amazon Cloud drive for all my pictures since its free to store them there.  Time will tell if Amazon is playing the same game of getting consumers hooked on putting their content in their cloud storage before they pull the plug and start charging for it!  But for now... My digital life is in order and its not costing me a dime!