Google Account

In preparation for our upcoming move to Android smartphones, I recently created a Google account for myself. Although at one time I had a gmail account, I never actually took advantage of it and ultimately deleted the account.

With the new account, I took full advantage, including email, calendar, a few odds and ends, but also Google Drive. Everything is inclusive. I have a Google calendar account that I used for several years, and I moved everything over to the new account. I also imported my contacts from Verizon (all 300 of them) to my gmail contacts. The contacts organization in Google is far superior to Verizon's crap.

Today I took advantage of Google Drive's free 15GB storage, which works pretty much like Dropbox. The sync feature works every bit as well. I already started moving my files over.

I really enjoy logging into my Google account and having everything laid out in tabs. Whether it's gmail, calendar, YouTube, Drive, etc., it's all there immediately available with a single click.

If anything bothers me about this, is that I waited so long to take advantage of this. I love how easily everything comes together within the account. I also love how easily we can share information (specifically the calendars) between accounts. This works perfectly for us as a family.

Once you link your new smart phones with your Google account, things like calendar reminders show on the phone!

Yes Bill, I'm aware of that. Since we depend so heavily on our calendar, that is one feature we are looking forward to.

So far I'm happy with everything in my Google account, with the notable exception of Google Drive (the downloaded program to sync my computer). I went right back to Dropbox and I deleted Google Drive from my system.

While Google Drive is much like Dropbox, it seems Google Drive is not ready for prime time. I had all sorts of problems getting Google Drive to sync my files. For unknown reasons, it would simply stop syncing and the icon grayed out with no explanation. A search shows the Google Drive problem is very common among both Windows and Mac users.

I really wanted it to work, as it would have made things much more convenient. But until Google comes up with a permanent solution, I'll stick with Dropbox. I'm not holding my breath, as Google does not seem to want to acknowledge the problem.

Google doesn't seem to much about any mistakes, they just quietly issue a new "upgraded" version.