Review: Wuala Online Peer-to-Peer Storage

August 21, 2008

Summary page of Wuala’s review is found here

Caleido AG

http://wua.la

• Type: Personal
• Free: Yes
• OS Compatibility: Windows Vista, Windows XP, Linux, Mac OS
• Notes: Free; 10GB: $25 per year; 1TB $1000 per year

Wuala combines secure online storage, file sharing, and community in a responsive Java app. You get 1GB free, which trails SkyDrive’s 5GB, but Wuala adds easier sharing, an option to increase your storage by donating hard drive space, and a more-accessible public file area than SkyDrive’s.

Drag-and-drop uploading. No installation required. Public file area offers open space to the world. Can block adult content.

Java client uses considerable memory. No Friend approval.

By Michael Muchmore

Wuala gives online storage a new spin with peer-to-peer storage-grid technology and a Java-based Web application with community features. This beta service’s publicly shared media folders resemble what you’d find in a peer-to-peer file-sharing service, as does the option to add more storage to your account by volunteering part of your hard drive to the service’s storage grid, thereby saving the company bandwidth costs. Though this means that your files may be stored on strangers’ PCs, the files are encrypted and sliced up so that a whole file won’t be on any single user’s system. The new service, whose Web site is located at wua.la, competes directly with Freedrive and Microsoft’s Windows Live SkyDrive, which also have public, shared, and private online folders. But SkyDrive gives you 5GB of free storage, compared with the mere 1GB Wuala offers gratis. AOL’s ill-fated Xdrive, with its Adobe AIR desktop client, resembles Wuala even more, but that service is being discontinued.

Read the Wuala (beta) full review

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