Question about Win 8.1 RT and Skydrive

[kristalsoldier]

Hi...

Just finished watching the Surface 2 and Pro 2 presentation and found it very interesting. As before, I interest is focused on the Surface 2 and not Pro2.

Now, if I understood Panos correctly, he mentioned two points - first when I buy the Surface 2, I get 200 GB of Skydrive free. That is easy enough to understand. He then said something else which I found intriguing. He said that with the Surface 2, saving directly to Skydrive is now a reality. So, two questions: (1) Am I understanding the second part of what Panos said correctly - that the default location to save files etc. on the Surface 2 is Skydrive (but which can be changed, if necessary)? And (2) if yes, then is that capability (defaulting to save on Skydrive) a function of the hardware or of the OS (i.e., Win RT8.1)?

Why am I asking this? Well, on my Win 8 desktop machine, when I want to save files, I seem to almost always get the option to save on Skydrive. In fact, I could say that the save function defaults to Skydrive. But, of course, I can exercise the option to save elsewhere, I choose to do so. But that is not what happens when I try to save files on my Surface RT (which runs Win 8 RT as of now). In the latter instance, I have to deliberately choose to save on Skydrive - in other words, the default location to save is not Skydrive. Will this change when the official update to 8.1 takes place? Or, is this a function of the Surface 2 hardware?

Optimally, I'd like to default to Skydrive - both on my desktop machine and my Surface RT (1st Gen) while having the flexibility to choose and alternate (local) location.

Apologies if this appears a bit convoluted, but I hope the question I pose makes sense. If not, I'd be happy to clarify more.

Thanks in advance.

 

[jnjroach]

One of the points of Panos talking about SkyDrive is all of your settings and defaults are Sync'd with SkyDrive. New in RT in 8.1 is that we have the SkyDrive Folder in explorer and are able to make items and/or folders available offline (like the x86 SkyDrive Desktop App). You should be able to save to SkyDrive from Office currently, but yes the default is SkyDrive in 8.1, for both Office and Modern UI Apps (with exceptions, Adobe's PDF reader still defaults to local storage).

One caveat to all of this, SkyDrive Pro (Which is part of Office 2013 Professional Plus and is available through SharePoint and Office365 Business SKUs) supersedes normal SkyDrive if you are syncing accounts that have access to SkyDrive Pro (I have 2 different accounts that have SkyDrive Pro access). I know this part is beyond what you asked but for fullness of the situation I wanted it to be clear.

These are changes being implemented to 8.1/RT 8.1 and not hardware specific.

 

[kristalsoldier]

Nice! Thanks!

 

[surferjim]

One caveat to all of this, SkyDrive Pro (Which is part of Office 2013 Professional Plus and is available through SharePoint and Office365 Business SKUs) supersedes normal SkyDrive if you are syncing accounts that have access to SkyDrive Pro (I have 2 different accounts that have SkyDrive Pro access). I know this part is beyond what you asked but for fullness of the situation I wanted it to be clear.

Can you explain how to sync and use SkyDrive Pro on the Surface rt w/ 8.1? I have an A2 academic account that I would like to use.

Also, what is the story if I have a regular SkyDrive acct that I want to sync and use in addition to the SkyDrive Pro acct. I have 25 GB storage on each and need to figure out the best way to configure my RT w/ 8.1 (preview for now).

Thx.

 

[jnjroach]

You are not able to sync a SkyDrive Pro folder on RT but can access it from within Office.