Hewlett-Packard has just officially announced the release of HP Upline, a consumer online storage service that can be used for both backup and file sharing purposes.
The online storage space has been heating up lately with the release of Dropbox, Sugarsync, and now this offering. These new services seem to recognize that consumers don’t want separate solutions for backing up their files, accessing them wherever they go, and sharing them with friends.
HP Upline is making its mark by providing unlimited storage for $59/year. Free accounts limited to 1GB and one year are also available for those who want to try before buying. Families and small businesses can also take advantage of special licenses and features that allow for central management of multiple accounts.
Unfortunately, the software works only on PCs, which makes it pretty much useless to me (a Mac owner). The technology was designed by Opelin, a company bought by HP last year, and a video demo of it can be found here.
Who cares about Mac, the real question, do they back up external (USB) drives, Mozy and Carbonite do not, making your big fat external drive a little less useful.
Carbonite will be offering external drive storage within a month.
Mozy has 2GB free and is $4.95 unlimited for both PC and MAC…much better
http://www.mozy.com/?ref=3f9a8.....54&m=5“>
Don’t forget about Amazon S3 and Jungle Disk. Jungle Disk (http://www.jungledisk.com) supports Win, Mac, and Linux and IS truly unlimited - no restrictions on backing up USB drives, network drives, etc..
I have to agree with @1, why do I care if you use a Mac, or if it is windows only software, just like 90% of all other software in the world ?
@Peter - Well, for online storage solutions it matters quite a bit, especially when they profess to help you access your files wherever you go. Even if you’re a PC user, you’ll be out of luck if you go somewhere without PCs.
Can I back up files from my external hard drive or thumb drive?
Yes. Upline can backup any drive or device your PC can mount.
Out of luck if I go somewhere without a PC?
Ha! Now that is funny.
“you’ll be out of luck if you go somewhere without PCs.”
Just that such place does not exist unless you live inside a Apple Store or something.
hey, you leaved that one served mark..
and what i truly wanted to say was that, how or why should a PC making company like HP would feel the need to offer solutions to Mac?. that does not make sense at all.
@Peter & #1 — are you serious? Have you been living in a cave? Apple has been gaining ground on Microsoft, for web apps to only cater to ONE of these is ridiculous.
Seems interesting…
nothing is unlimited… there has to be limits
@ #1 Damon
ElephantDrive has offered backup for PCs and their external drives since its launch. Full Mac support is coming, but Mac users can use the web interface and/or the mapped drive service (still has the beta tag on it).
It also leverages Amazon S3, but not completely like JungleDisk. When S3 has experienced its rare outages, ElephantDrive service has been uninterrupted.
The point is that people will trust ‘HP’ more than some of these other startups (whether that’s fair or not).
so what my web hosting company offer unlimited access for $5/month with backup , anti spam, security support - big companies are no where on leading edge side
You can check out MyBloop.com too. they offer unlimited file storage even for free users.
Macs do matter, ask the bulk of those buying laptops these days . My Time Capsule can’t be beat.
I am stunned by the people who feel that a non-mac compatible storage product is a viable long term solution for SHARING files. Its actually laughable. Thats like Microsoft deciding not to offer Office for Mac in an effort to stear people away from Mac.
This is a hugely competitive space, and it’s just going to get more intense.
The question is, who is really providing the best service.
Please keep in mind, this does not really mean whose AJAX interface looks the best to any particular reviewer, but whose service will actually perform most effectively at scale.
HP has not proven themselves yet. DropBox and SugarSync have not proven themselves yet (though they certainly may over time).
Mozy and Carbonite certainly have better claim that the others at this point, though both have had their own problems. I also believe ElephantDrive has a compelling claim along these lines in particular, but as I am affiliated with the company I leave it to others to report on.
Something seems a bit off with their plan pricing. Home is $4.99 per month or $59 per year. Family is $6.99 per month or $149 per year. Even multiplying by 3 (users) somewhere doesn’t really make the family pricing make sense. And am I paying more per user for the family plan because of the Dashboard?
https://www.upline.com/
https://www.upline.com/plans/index.shtml
From their support page…
Q: How long will my backup take?
A: Upline typically backs up about 150-250 MB per hour
Thats about 71 KBps on the high end. Blazing.
Q: How would I use online backup and local backup together?
A: … Local backup is also good for backing up your Outlook .pst files, not currently supported in online backup.
Why would you want your .pst backed up online? It’s not like there’s anything important in there. Just your email.
https://www.upline.com/support/faq/backup.shtml
Based on Whois data, it looks like the support is outsourced to this firm in the Netherlands:
http://www.innovate-it.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/uplinetechsupport.com
Looks like another killer HP product!
When is google bringing something like this out?
There are a countless number of services offering free 1GB or 5GB storage. Can we get a company to aggregate all these free storage spaces onto a single website?
Say I have storage accounts with Live, Google, HP, Dropbox, etc, I want to upload to, say, StorageSpaceManager.com and they will disperse that file between my free online storage accounts automatically.
Thanks for playing, HP. You would think after the recent Dvorak article exposing your scorched earth philosophy - when it comes to your website and customer support - that you’d work on that first.
Especially when you consider that you aren’t even competitive, are about two years behind, and had to buy someone else to even get it to work. Isn’t this the same company that had a little problem respecting people’s privacy not too long ago? I’d rather take my chances on a startup with 3 guys in a garage than trust even the most boring email thread to HP as a “backup” solution.
Prediction: HP and Microsoft - one will be dead before 2013. They just continually demonstrate that they don’t get it. Anyone else remember when Epson sold computers? Now HP wants to sell consumer storage solutions over the internet? Maybe they should work on their own website first before they tell the rest of us how to use the internet. That thing is a testament to all that is unholy and deviant on the internet. And I’m writing this from an HP laptop that I truly like. Just don’t ask me to look up my own model number on HP’s website. I’d rather write a book-length report on fruit flies - because I’d get it done sooner.
*yawn*
can we have some real product now. this a crowded space since the last 10 years. ofcourse like somebody said ppl may trust the HP brand, but didnt some big company(is it ibm?) buy mozy?
Hey guys, stop harassing Mark :-P, anyways, i wish I had this post two months ago. A SB client I have wanted this type of solution but he also wanted the ability to share the files with clients using quickbase online (quickbase storage seemed a little expensive for him). I couldn’t find a place that will compare these services. I ended up recommending S3 with Jungle Disk but the guy liked Mozy’s easy of use better.
The client app is Windows only but the online version can be accessed by Mac, Windows, Linux, Unix. The online version allows you to manage, upload, share, etc. so the OS limitation to Windows is just the local app which is so so anyway. “Me too” app? Of course, but this is just a checkmark on HP’s long list of offerings. Remember HP doesn’t just sell computers, they offer many other types of products and services such as cameras, printers, servers, IT equipment, services, etc. And BTW, Mac’s market share is something like 3%. Pretty much a rounding error.
Carbonite and/or Mozy are MUCH better than HP’s offering.
The client application from HP is awful in my opinion. The upload/back up speeds were quite slow as well.
Very interesting…
Why would HP create a client for the Mac when every Apple comes with .Mac? It’s unfortunate that this requires a Win32 download as the method for uploading content, but it does resolve issues such as upload and download resumability in theory, something I’m sure every web based file sharing/sending company has issues with.
What could make this a money maker for HP is the obvious bundling with every new HP consumer desktop that they sell, which means that HP has a great way of marketing to potentially new customers that the other companies could not necessarily market to since HP sells more consumer PCs than anyone else apparently.
Mozy won’t back up an external USB drive? That’s news to me since I’m using Mozy to back up about 30GB from a USB drive. Works just fine, never an issue.
Mac OS is definitely a growing market, for those who still think software manufacturer should only offer the choice for PCs, you are definitely wrong! As for HP, they are still a step behind as many of the competitors are offering the choices for PCs, Mac, or even Linux. But still, HP did a good start in entering the web service provider market
.NET, gross….
I actually bothered to read the EULA, for the first time in my life. Nahh, nobody that can’t offer me some sort of SLA is getting my data.
.NET.. hmm, too bad then…
Someone delete the noob’s link from #3 with the referral built in.. and click mine http://www.mozy.com/?ref=norefthanks
try a non ref link then http://mozy.com/
This crappy product doesn’t even deserve a mention @ Techcrunch. My favorite is aol’s xdrive which gives you 5GB free.
I’ve been using SkyDrive from Microsoft. 5GB storage is free, and works well.
http://skydrive.live.com
Wow! so now even HP enters. As competion
Wow! so now even HP enters. As competition increases I am sure either the prices would be reduced or they would offer it as a free service.
http://www.uploadmachine.com/ is more simple and easy.
Upline has a local backup feature.
” * Easily create a local backup to a CD, DVD, NAS or USB drive or to a second partition on your hard drive.
* Set up an automatic reminder to create your local backup.”
I use Wixi http://www.wixi.com and http://iphone.wixi.com all my music, photos and video are 100% online and i can play it everywhere. Hopefully Wixi offers unlimited storage for beta! …but Wixi dont have a sync desktop app which i think it is a musthave feature for storage. That s why i use Mozy and Wixi. and external HD…
Hot on the heels of the Adobe rights grab comes HP, the HP Terms of use for this fantastic new service:
“…HP and its designees will be free to copy, disclose, distribute, incorporate and otherwise use the Communications and all data, images, sounds, text, and other things embodied therein for any and all commercial or non-commercial purposes….”
http://welcome.hp.com/country/.....ofuse.html
Yeah, right. Nice and safe and secure. I really HP to have unlimited rights to anything I upload. What’s wrong with these companies?
It’s funny that this was listed as a negative, because I may use this for the simple reason that it doesn’t work on apple computers.
Out of curiosity I got an account with them and tried it out.
That was about a week ago and what’s happening now is quite terrible…
I’d uploaded about 7GBs of data(out of about 27GBs) and after closing the client and restarting it 2 days ago, the upload bar went right back to ZERO. After some checking, I realised I was actually connected to someone else’s account! Naturally i’ve dropped them 2 emails(once yesterday and one more about half an hour ago) but have yet to receive a reply from them. I was expecting faster response times from a company dealing with data from others…
I’ve also been trying to uninstall the client application for the past hour but it seems to be “Gathering Required Information” for just as long…
Not a good experience.
P.S. Does a John Cook from HP read techcrunch? You might wanna check your upline account and see if you’ve got any of my stuff. Lol.
Yeah, but the only catch is all your backup files are being sent to Carly Fiorina’s personal computer.
I’ve been trying to access upline for the last few hours, but it only says: ‘ The HP Upline Service is temporarily unavailable.’
After two years using Mozy, my advice…AVOID IT! Their support team has no clue how the service works. In February I switched to a new computer and after following their instructions the minute I enabled my new computer on their servers, Mozy’s servers deleted 160Gb that was backed up. I ended up having to re-upload my entire backup. To top it all off, nothing changed in my new computer since the drive letters remained the same. Mozy had no reason to delete my backup just because I migrated into a new PC.
To top it all off. I had to warn them of a security feature in their new account setup process. When you sign up for a new account, they generate a confirmation link that provides login free (no user name or password) access to your account and your files. Anyone with a 7th grader’s hacking knowledge could generate those links for anyone’s account. I hope they’ve paid attention and closed that security hole.
Last week their site was down for two days and I just refused to deal with it anymore. I canceled my account and I am happily moving to HP Upline.
Mozy needs to get over it’s Starbucks culture and focus on business!
The “Unlimited” space turns out to be limited to 50 GB …