P2P Sync Not Coming To SkyDrive; Dropbox Like Features Being Considered

Omar Shahine and Mona Akmal from the SkyDrive team held an AMA on reddit answering user questions.  We’ll be sharing any interesting tidbits.

Many users still want features that were availbale in Windows Live Mesh & FolderShare such as Peer-to-Peer Mesh Sync.  Mona Akmal addressed this:

P2P sync as a technology serves two purposes: 1. Make syncing of files between two devices faster 2. Bypass a physical cloud location

We are always working on achieving #1 and will consider all technologies that help us make syncing faster. For #2, we do not believe this is a sustainable model for most users since device connectivity is not guaranteed and “all-your-files-anywhere” cannot be achieved without a physical cloud location. So we have no plans of bringing P2P back as an alternative to SkyDrive cloud storage.

The SkyDrive team is acutely aware that many users want dropbox like features in SkyDrive:

Question: Can we please, please get shared folder sync? This is the only thing I miss about dropbox. I don’t like having to use the web interface or the clunky windows 8 metro interface to get to shared folders. I want that stuff in my PC’s file explorer so i can work with it more easily! Please for the love of God and all that is holy, don’t fire back with some generic PR line telling me essentially to get over it and use the web or the Windows 8 metro app.

Please acknowledge this as a need that users have been begging for, for several releases now.

Omar: Dude, I tell Mona this every day. You have no idea…..

MonaAkal: >:) I hear you both. And I agree it’s an incredibly important scenario. Unfortunately we don’t have anything to share right now.

Source: Reddit