I-Drive Gives Floppy Disks the Boot

SAN FRANCISCO (09/05/2000) - It's hard to be a floppy disk person in a Web-based world. I've had trouble parting with those little beige and black disks in favor of Web storage. But the latest upgrade to I-drive.com could change all that.

The Web-based storage site has added features and enhanced its existing capabilities. The improvements are significant enough that I just may forget about floppy disks forever. And, if you've already moved past the floppy disk (like most people), I-drive just may convince you that this is the Web-based storage site you want to use.

The company has made it easier to save documents onto your I-drive. You can now drag and drop them into the folder that I-drive automatically adds to your desktop. You must be online to do so, and I-drive prompts you to dial up if you are not. You have to download a plug-in for the drag-and-drop option to work.

You can also use the "save as" function in your application. Choose Web folders and then select your I-drive folder to save documents.

Competitor Driveway has offered those functions for some time, but now I-drive draws even by adding these conveniences.

Web-Clipping Enhanced

And I-drive goes further, improving on some of the fun features added earlier this year. Last spring, I-drive introduced an activity center where you can manage image and audio files. You can build and share photo albums that you store online, and you can create music playlists that you can stream directly off your I-drive without downloading the files to your hard drive. These features now work more easily and appear to work much more consistently.

Also enhanced are the tools you need to collect files from the Web. You can download one tool, Filo, in less than a minute and use it to easily save Web pages onto your I-drive. You simply right-click on any Web page you want to save. Then select clip page to I-drive to save the page as it is, or bookmark page to I-drive to save a link to the page. When I tried Filo in an earlier version last spring, it was unreliable and asked me to re-enter my password repeatedly. But I-drive seems to have worked out the kinks.

Managing Your Music

Another convenient tool, called Sideload, is available through several of I-drive's partner sites. This feature lets you save downloadable material to your I-drive with a simple click--you don't have to download it. One partner site offering this is the music site Scour Inc., which means you can fill your I-drive with music files in a matter of seconds. And I-drive allows unlimited storage space for content you collect from the Web, but there's a 50MB limit for what you store from your desktop.

With Sideload, you can easily obtain a wide selection of music to create your own playlist. Just select the songs, arrange them in order, and hit play. You have a choice of music players, including RealJukebox and MusicMatch Jukebox. The quality leaves something to be desired. Especially if you're running it at a high-traffic time, you may spend more time in the buffering stage than listening. But it is an easy way to access your music files.

Creating photo albums is just as easy. You add photos, arrange them, and send invites to your friends and family with links to see them.

Those kind of tools are admittedly a lot more fun than your average floppy disk.

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