Free Online Storage

Tonight's distraction has been brought to you (well, me and now you) by: Free Online Storage!
For some reason even though I have around 70 Gigs available on my Macbook and around 30+ on my home computer I am convinced that I HAVE to have more storage. I was looking at getting one of those External Hard Drives for around $100 during the tax free weekend but thankfully decided not to. (Editors Note: I believe that these devices are quite important and useful in many settings and would even consider myself an advocate for them...but not when you are broke!). For some reason I got a wild hare tonight and I googled online storage chased this rabbit down.
I was amazed to see how much FREE space is available out there. With accessibility to those files anywhere in the world that you can connect to the internet (take that overpriced USB thumb drives!) it seems like this "virtual" space is part of the wave of the future. With more digital photos and youtube videos hogging all or our computers real estate free space is a commodity that is as Harry Carey put it "highly valuable". So, I have done some research over the last few hours and I present the thumbnail results and highlights.

OminDrive: 1GB of free space (w/ a ton of cool features to make it easy to use)
DropBoks: 1 GB free (super streamlined and improving features)
Mozy: 2 GB free (built to automatically back up files on your computer for you...sweet)
Xdrive: 5 GB free (you need/have to have either an AOL or AIM account to use this, but who doesn't have a AOL Screen Name?)
MyOtherDrive: 5 GB free (and you can have single files as large as 1 GB. Read: a place for that video that is eating up Gig of you hard drive)
MediaMax: 25 GB free (Yes. 25 Gigabytes FREE! I owned and used a computer just a year ago with only 30 Gigs on the entire Hard Drive.)

There are of course others and some strings attached to it. For example some of the accounts storage might limit on the size of each file you upload or how much add to your storage space during a month. But again with the potential for instant access to your files on your friends computer and some cool features like easy to use drag and drop interface and customizable folders within your account it seems like it is worth the pains. As an added bonus most of them have the ability to let you share access to your files with your friends so they can use or preview some files. Much much nicer than trying to e-mail your friend that 200 MB video file or even a Powerpoint Presentation you might be working on together. Security at some sites might not be air tight and I would not recommend you put a file called "My Credit Card Number and Other Interesting Info" on any of the sites. It is probably just as secure as anything currently on your computer or your e-mail.
I am planning on jumping into the world of online storage in the coming days, beats the heck out of cleaning. I am thinking about getting a couple of them to test them out or read some more reviews to figure out which would fit me best. I am very interested in taking advantage of the 25 Gigs at MediaMax to keep a lot of my rarely used files (videos, pictures, maybe some music) and maybe use one of the other sites with smaller space allowances but easier access and quicker upload/download speeds.
I would love to hear if anyone actually tries some of this stuff out or if you are already "into" online storage solutions. Here is a great link to CNET's top 6 online storage options and another older site with 6 online storage sites. Now go out there and use some free space.

kirkout