Cloud computing

The problem with automatic updates is mostly known in Windows based systems when updates go bad and cause troubles, that can go from ad nauseam offerings of the same updates, no matter how many times you try to install them, to having your computer rendered unbootable.

Software manufacturers, though, seem to love them. Google is nice enough to install about 32723 versions of Google Update, purportedly to update whatever Google software you were not so wise to install. For some time now, Google Chrome started updating itself automatically, which obviously brings some unexpected surprises, at times. I have had to cleanup after Google’s updates, that rendered Chrome unusable, at least twice.

The recent problematic newcomer to the automatic update troublemakers list is Cubby. I must say I like Cubby. It allows me to keep my work files synchronized between my computers without me having to worry about it. It just works. Additionally, it keeps a copy of the files on Cubby’s servers, meaning I have a copy of my most valuable files off premises. This is a safety measure that anyone that cares about its files should implement.

Liking Cubby does not meant that I like the fact that cubby updates itself automatically because, well, things can go wrong. Today things went badly wrong with Cubby. Both my computers showed Cubby restarting itself early in the morning and a simple check allowed me to see, to my despair, that all my cubbies (all the folders that I use Cubby to keep synchronized) were syncing. They have been syncing all day (50 GB of files in each computer), taking 25% of my CPU time and wasting valuable bandwidth, while some files that actually needed immediate syncing, are just queued due to the huge overload of Cubby checking and syncing every single file.

The Cubby episode today closed the deal for me. I no longer want software that updates itself automatically. If Cubby does not provide an option to disable automatic updates, I will not renew Cubby, when my subscription is up for renewal next December. My time is too precious to be left to the mercy of any software manufacturer’s poor testing practices. I know software can have issues, but thorough testing is supposed to avoid scenarios such as the one I experienced today.

No one seems to be deserving confidence when providing automatic updates to your software. At the very least, you should be offered the option to accept an update and provided with the choice to go back to a working version, when the latest update fails, usually miserably. It’s just not acceptable that you have to waste precious time because someone who provides you with software, cannot test it properly.

I have Windows Update set not to install updates automatically. This allows me to backup before updating and to update only when I have the time to do it. I will get SysInternals autoruns and disable GoogleUpdate. As to Cubby, well, it’s decided, either the option to avoid automatic updates is added, or Cubby will be gone from my systems in December.

This week saw the official announcement of the death of a tool that I have used extensively since its launch – Windows Live Mesh. In an email sent to the remaining Live Mesh users, Microsoft stated that “it makes sense to merge SkyDrive and Mesh into a single product for anytime and anywhere access to files”, so Live Mesh will be retired on February 13, 2013.

Ever since Live Mesh was initially released, Microsoft has been steadily improving its cloud offerings. One of those that I now use regularly is the Team Foundation service, available on tfs.visualstudio.com. TFS is an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) service, meant for developers. Of course, there is also Office365, soon to become a lot more used, even by regular users, with the upcoming release of Office 2013 and its new subscription based purchasing model. SkyDrive, however, is the most relevant piece of Microsoft’s cloud strategy, in what regular users are concerned.

SkyDrive was revamped a few months ago and although the free storage offered was reduced to just 7 GB (for new users, as older users who took advantage of a timed offer can have 25 GB free), tiered, paid storage additional options are now available. One of the problems with SkyDrive was the difficulty to access it from a computer or other computing devices, other than from a browser, that is. The first sign of change in this area, was the excellent Windows Phone software, that integrated SkyDrive very well, allowing seamless access to photos, Office and other documents stored on SkyDrive. This easy access to SkyDrive was “ported” to Windows 8 where, like in Windows Phone 7.x and now Windows Phone 8, a Microsoft account can be used. Office 2013 takes good advantage of this easier access. While until now, OneNote was the single Office app that could easily use SkyDrive as the place to store, share and work cooperatively on OneNote documents, with Office 2013, the same ability to work cooperatively on documents stored on SkyDrive was extended to Word, Excel and Powerpoint. This new Office 2013 SkyDrive integration is really good and will make the cooperative work on Office documents a lot easier – at work, we have started to use it extensively, with great satisfaction and success.

The issue of SkyDrive integration with Windows Explorer (File Explorer in Windows 8) was meant to be addressed by the SkyDrive app. However, the two versions of this app, the initial one, released a few months ago, and a very recent update, when compared to Windows Live Mesh, are rather poor. Windows Live Mesh was (is) an excellent software tool. Among other features, it allowed syncing of folders, freely chosen by its users, between different computers and even different users. It also allowed the synchronization to be done with the “cloud” – a 5GB storage space provided in SkyDrive and reserved exclusively to this purpose.

Live Mesh did not require a preset folder organization – it allowed the sharing any folder, regardless of location and that folder could be mapped, in the destination computer, wherever desired. Through this freedom of mapping of the shared folders location, Live Mesh did not impose a way to organize one’s folder structure, it simply adapted to each user’s preferred drive organization scheme. That, and the fact that when synchronizing between computers located in a local network, Live Mesh did not use the internet to transfer the files, using the local network instead, were two of the signs of a cleverly, smartly designed software tool (we really don’t have enough of these!).

In what concerns file synchronization, the SkyDrive app fares much worse than Live Mesh. For users like me, who have relied on Live Mesh to share files with others, the app does not allow access to files that were initially shared by others. To do that, you still need to use your browser. On the other hand, when mapping shared folders in computers different from those where the sharing was initiated, there is no freedom to choose the destination path – everything goes under a root SkyDrive folder. You can choose where, in your local file system, this root folder goes, but that’s all that can be done. There is no way to map each individual folder, as it was possible with Live Mesh.

Of course, the SkyDrive app has some advantages over Live Mesh, the most relevant being the ability to allow access from Windows Explorer (or File Explorer, in Windows 8) to all of the available SkyDrive storage space, instead of just the previous 5 GB. For new users of the free service, however, this will just mean 2 extra GB, so not that much, actually, but still an advantage. To me, that’s probably the only advantage of the app, compared to Live Mesh. Yes, there are SkyDrive apps on other platforms, but I really couldn’t care less about it. I’m all in on Microsoft’s ecosystem – I own a Windows Phone, my computers run Windows in various flavors, from Vista to 8 (which I quite enjoy, by the way), I use Office and I develop using Visual Studio.

At this time, where the use of cloud based services and storage is on the rise, and where the advantages of that use are becoming clearer, the announced death of Live Mesh is bad news. It’s very hard to accept a degradation of functionality, once you get used to a better way. I can see no technical reasons for the Windows SkyDrive app not to offer the same file sharing and syncing abilities of Live Mesh. The SkyDrive app, though it has improved in its latest version, is still lacking. It is like Microsoft’s urge to change and adapt to fight Apple’s and Google’s competition has caused it to rush things and the end result are initial versions of products are that are, in some cases, glaringly lacking. Windows RT is a case in point, as the Metro side of Windows 8 seems to be, as the desktop versions of SkyDrive are. Different scales, of course, but can they be signs of the same problem?

It’s possible that a future version of the SkyDrive app will improve on the current limitations. I am not holding my breath, though. I will just have to find a replacement, to keep syncing my files as I want to. The good thing is that there are competing cloud alternatives (my own favorite backup tool, Acronis True 2013 offers sync functionality, which I need to check properly) and maybe there can be some advantages of not putting all my cloud based eggs in Microsoft’s basket.