First look: HP Upline a solid online storage, backup client

Source: arstechnica.com

By David Chartier

The online storage and backup space is heating up. As our Internet connections speed up and storage space gets cheaper, the potential of easy remote file storage is increasing. Between a growing number of startups and even giants like AOL, Apple, and Microsoft, there is no shortage of free or cheap services that offer everything from private online storage to full system backups. While HP may be an unlikely candidate for this space, it has nevertheless entered the remote data storage market with Upline, a service that offers unlimited storage for both backing up and sharing your files. Ars took HP Upline for a spin to see if the computer maker’s latest offering can compete.

HP offers four different plans with its Upline service (three featuring unlimited storage), their value based primarily on the number of users that will access the storage space and files. It should also be noted that Upline is, unsurprisingly, Windows-only. The first plan, called Limited, is more or less a training-wheel program that offers 1GB of free space for a year. The first commercial plan in Upline’s tier, “Home & Home Office,” costs $59 per year for a single user. Next there’s “Family” with support for three users at $149/year, then “Professional” with support for up to 100 users at $299 per year.

After signing up for an account, you download a small Upline client that may need to install other libraries such as .NET Framework 2.0. The only system requirements HP specifies for Upline are a 233MHz CPU (500MHz recommended), 64MB RAM, 15MB of disk space, and at least IE 5.5, Firefox 1.5, or Netscape 8.0. Since Upline can optionally act as a local backup service as well, HP also recommends some kind of CD/DVD writer, external hard drive, second hard drive partition, or network drive.
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