UPDATE: Microsoft has corrected this with the Windows 8.1 Update. If you need this functionality, upgrade your device to the latest version of Windows. Please see our post Windows 8.1 Quick Start Guide for instructions.
One of the most appealing features of the Surface RT tablet is Skydrive. Skydrive is a program that allows you to automatically sync data between your Surface and the cloud.
If you’ve used Skydrive in the past with your PC or laptop you might remember that it keeps a local copy that you can access when your computer isn’t connected to the Internet.
Unfortunately with the Surface RT tablet Skydrive does not keep a local copy of your files, though some folks at Microsoft say they’re looking into changing it so it can cache locally.
So, what can you do in the meantime? Well, there’s only one thing you can do for the moment; manually save your files to either the local storage or to a SD card that can be inserted into your Surface. It’s a little 1996 but, it does work.
Heres an article with some more details: http://www.bit.com.au/News/322030,if-youre-buying-a-microsoft-surface-be-aware-of-this.aspx
The likely reason that Microsoft omitted this functionality is because of the limited storage on the Surface RT, as the biggest version you can currently buy has only 64GB of internel memory. After the OS is installed, it leaves only about 40GB of that storage free before you start installing applications. Since the capacity of a free Skydrive can be as much as 25GB, it wouldn’t take too much to completely fill up the internal storage and then some.
So, I guess it was the safe way for Microsoft to go. Of course, they could have just added functionality to tell you how much storage you have left and give you the option to select only the folders or documents you want to sync to your Surface.
Hopefully, Microsoft will fix their Skydrive syncing issue as many folks are unhappy about this omission in functionality.
Tim
