Over the coming months the team here at untitled™ will be looking at various software,apps and components we feel our customers can use to make a day in the office that much easier. This month we’ll be exploring Google Drive, a personal favourite of ours (not just because we are Official Google Apps Resellers), explaining what Google Drive is, what features it possesses and what the potential rewards are from installing Google Drive.
Google Drive launched in April 2012 as the direct replacement for the long serving Google Documents as the company’s response to online popular file storage rivals Dropbox, SugarSync, Appe’s iCloud and Microsoft’s Sky Drive.
What is Google Drive?
Google Drive is a wonderful cloud storage tool enabling file storing, synchronizing, back up’s and editing for all your personal and business files in one easy convenient place, and best of all, it’s completely free! Offering the best competitive service, Google Drive offers a generous 5GB of free online storage (from June for Google Apps Business users this increases to a combined storage across email and drive to 30GB). This is more than its competitors, and with reasonable upgrade prices if you need more storage; ranging from 25GB up to 16TB on a pay monthly subscription basis.
Not only is Google Drive free (or £35 per user per annum on the Google Apps Business package), but you can also access your files anywhere, everywhere! Offering both desktop and mobile applications, Google Drive automatically synchronizes keeping everything up to date, meaning you can access the very latest version of your work from anywhere, regardless of where you are, on the web, on your hard drive or on the go, even if you’re not you’re not connected to the internet. Continue to share, edit and save your work and the very latest update will be waiting for you wherever you next access your documents.
Installing Google Drive also allows you to connect with the company's other integrated services and systems such as Gmail, GoogleDocs, Google+, Chrome and even YouTube!
7 Benefits of using Google Drive
1. Compatible With Multiple Systems
The first and arguably the most important benefit of installing Google Drive is that it is compatible on a number supported browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer along with a range of systems including Windows Vista – Windows 8, Apple Mac’s Lion 10.7 – Snow Leopard 10.6 and mobile/tablet devices up to Android 2.1 .For the full system list Click Here
2. Collaboration
Collaboration is a very unique tool we’ve certainly found useful. This feature allows you to access share and collaborate on numerous Google Docs, sheets, slides, videos and photo’s with numerous users and friends at the same time providing they are online. Both users will be able to monitor what the other is changing at all times.
3. Built-In Search Engine
Google Drive has also implemented a very cleaver, powerful search engine feature meaning you can locate your files even quicker. Search for content by keyword search or filter by file type, owner and much more.
4. Time Travel
Restore Lost Documents – Google Drive synchronizes every change you make to each document, so when you save your work a new version of your document is created. With this in mind, Google Drive stores your previous work up to 30 days previous. So if you accidently delete or change a file, it can easily be rescued.
5. Share
You can share what you want with who you want on Google Drive, sounds impressive right? This feature allows you to share various files and folders with anybody you choose with added permissions meaning you grant them how much access they have in viewing, editing and commenting on your work.
6. View Multiple Files
Another neat feature included is that Google Drive supports over 30 different formats allowing you to view almost anything in your browser, regardless if you have them installed or not. To see the complete list Click Here
7. Chat
This has proved to be a useful tool for everybody at the untitled™ office. This built-in feature allows you to send and receive instant messages with other people within your contact list. Better yet, you can take this one step further by installing voice and video chats
Conclusion
Hopefully, you found this blog insightful and informative as to what is actually out there to improve the everyday tasks in the office. We feel Google Drive proves to be a cost-cutting, time save essential application we’d happily recommend to anybody. Why not contact us to discuss your needs further.