Solve Your Storage Needs Online

You remember that day well -- the day you got a load of the new "Compusurdo XJ2000" with the plug 'n' play Internet connection at your local "Best Deals" store. "Five gigabytes of hard drive," you muttered to yourself, looking at the sales sheet. "How do you use up five gigs of memory?"

Well, you found out, didn't you? Your fabulous new XJ2000 hadn't even collected its first light coating of dust before those "essential" programs you installed had gobbled up more than a gig. Then you started surfing, and before you could say ABC -- or MP3 -- your hard drive was sending "You are running out of disk space" messages in desperation.

Fortunately, some Internet companies have come up with a solution: online file storage. Need extra space to host your growing digital photo collection? Check out Xdrive. It comes with 5GB of free storage, file access and sharing capabilities via any browser, Palm VII or WAP-enabled hand-held device.

i-drive is another leading online storage site. Here you'll get the standard features -- peer-to-peer sharing, drop and drag functionality and wireless access -- and they'll throw in their own brand of content collection and management tools to keep your libraries in order.

FreeDrive offers an additional feature allowing you to schedule downloads so as not to interrupt intense surfing sessions.

Storage businesses make their money by charging for additional chunks of memory, but many now also offer CD burning services. For a small fee, put images, a video or a database on a personal CD you can carry with you anywhere.