Elliot, Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us about your vision on Ubuntu One. Now let me share some of mine.
I'm a big fan of Ubuntu One and I think it could very well grow into a unique 'selling' point for Ubuntu. I've been using it extensively over the past few months and my overall impression is quite good, considering it's (mostly) free and still beta. I'm currently thinking of upgrading my account to 50GB, but there are a few issues which make me hesitant: 1. Performance. To be really useful, the sync performance should IMHO be improved. Currently, there's no way to tell a) when the sync process will start (varies between seconds and several minutes to up to one hour) and b) how long the sync process will take to complete. The file transfer rate is completely undisclosed to the user (from the netspeed applet I see it varies irregularly between 0 and 2 MBytes/sec) and syncing larger amounts of data takes, from my personal experience, several hours to complete. Considering I have a 60mbps cable connection at home, this is less than stellar performance. Just how long will it take to sync 50GB (or anything between 2 and 50GB, for that matter)?? 2. Updates of files sometimes don't get picked up by U1. This is especially annoying when working with i.e. an OOo document which has a lot of revisions and edits. Expecting to have the latest saved version to appear on another U1 connected computer within several minutes can prove to be disappointing. On more than one occasion, the latest saved version wasn't picked up at all but the other clients still showed the nice little green sign of the file being up-to-date. 3. Interaction with small disks. I use U1 extensively to sync files with my netbook. However, this netbook only has a 10GB disk. What happens when I upgrade U1 to 50GB and actually start using that space? I predict the netbook will get stuffed. And then what? Is there any way to have any control over what's being pushed to the netbook and what isn't? 4. Verbosity. As long as the whole sync process is still sometimes problematic, I'd like to be able to see just what exactly the U1 client is doing and what is has done. Just displaying 'Synchronization in progress' is just not verbose enough. I imagine there could be a 'more info' button (or plus sign) which would take me to a more detailed overview of what's going on. And of course, there's my wishlist of items: -Sync contacts with Thunderbird -Being able to use all the features of the Address Book (using pictures of people, creating groups etc.) -Calendar sync -Integration with other sources such as Google Docs / Calendar, IMAP servers etc. You might say 'hey, you just want a clone of Mobile Me!'. Well yes, I'd be thrilled to have a good alternative for this service, to make the Ubuntu solution more viable to people who are switching from Windows. Right now, most of my customers are moving towards Apple... Nevertheless, keep up the good work! Thanks for reading, regards, Matthijs _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntuone-users Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ubuntuone-users More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
