Thursday, January 7, 2010

HP netbooks to come with CloudDrive storage

One of the new features HP is offering with the HP Mini 210 and Mini 2102 netbooks is a cloud-based storage system that's cleverly called "CloudDrive." Basically, CloudDrive will let you store files on a remote server, but access them on your HP netbook as if they were stored on your local hard drive. The service will be powered by ZumoDrive, and the company will be using Amazon's S3 servers to store the data.

Because the computer treats CloudDrive as if it were local storage, you'll be able to do things like stream multimedia files in iTunes, Windows Media Player, and other applications whether they're stored on your PC or in the cloud. You can link specific folders to CloudDrive to sync data. And you can create links to share remotely stored files, photo albums, or folders with other users. You can also sync playlists so that you can listen to your music on a smartphone or other device.

It's not clear what kind of price tag will be associated with CloudDrive. I wouldn't be surprised if you got a certain amount of storage for free and then had to pay for a monthly subscription in order to get additional storage. But it's also possible that HP and ZumoDrive could have reached an arrangement to keep the price down, at least for new users.

You can read more about ZumoDrive at their web site.

via jkOnTheRun

Post from: Liliputing

HP netbooks to come with CloudDrive storage