Nokia Lumia and SkyDrive puts you in the cloud

The Nokia Lumia 800 comes with free access to Microsoft SkyDrive, a cloud-based vault for all your documents, photos, videos and music.

Why’s that a good thing? Well, there’s a few really big benefits.

Keeping your stuff here means you can access it from anywhere on any device via an Internet connection. For phone users, it’s especially valuable since you can store thousands of pictures without filling up your phone. Sharing is fully customizable – anything on your SkyDrive can be shared publically, with specific people or kept completely private.

You could also use Windows Live SkyDrive to back-up your phone content, so that even if you lose your handset, you’ll still have everything that was on it.

On the other side, SkyDrive is useful for work, as a place to upload Word, PowerPoint presentations or Excel spreadsheets. So you can be productive away from the office or at meetings and always have access to the documents you need.

To access SkyDrive you’ll need to have a Windows Live account, which takes only a few moments to create. Chances are, if you’ve ever used MSN, you’ll already have an account.

On your computer, point your browser to https://skydrive.live.com. If you already have a Windows Live login, enter that, otherwise you can sign up for one.

Once you’re logged in, you’re in your very own online cloud-space. It’s here that you can begin to create your individual folders. There are some default ones to get you started. But you can create as many as you like and call them anything.

It’s from within the Web browser view that you can make changes to the permission of each folder, meaning you can allow selected people to view the contents of any of the folders.

By default, whenever you create a new folder, it’s set to private, only available to you. So there’s no need to worry about privacy or sharing things by mistake. You control who can see your content.

On the Nokia Lumia 800, you can find SkyDrive in the Office Hub as one of the Live Tiles or in the Applications list. Once you’ve pressed that icon you’re taken to your own SkyDrive where you’re offered a range of different options.

By gliding your finger from left to right across the screen you’ll come across the locations section, which is where you’ll find SkyDrive, a default My Documents folder along with any other folders you might’ve created. Here you can browse the content.

It’s super easy to upload photos or video. Once you’ve captured that beautiful sunset, or a lonely dog standing outside a store waiting for its owner to return, you can send the image straight to the SkyDrive, provided you have Internet access.

When you get back to your desk, you can access the image or video on your PC for editing or to look at again.

There’s also the option to have every image or video you take sent to the SkyDrive automatically, making it even easier to remember those important moments – and avoid having to remember to plug it in and synchronize every week or so.

Are you looking forward to cloud-storage with SkyDrive? How would you best use this service? Let us know using the comments below.

Image credit: flickrohit