That changed Wednesday with Amazon's release of a free desktop program for its cloud storage service. There are versions of the software for Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Mac 10.6 and 10.7.

The software is a cinch to install in Windows. After , you simply double-click the app's installer. A window will pop up. Click install. At the end of the install, click "finish" and another window will appear asking for your Amazon log-in information. Fill in the fields, and you're ready to start uploading files to the Amazon cloud.

When the drive app is running, you can send files to the cloud by right-clicking on a file on your computer, hovering over the "send to" option and choosing Amazon Cloud Drive from the "send to" menu.

You can also upload files to the cloud drive by dragging them to the cloud icon that appears in the system tray.

When you want to download or manage files on your cloud drive, you have to access it via a web browser. You can go directly to the drive at Amazon's website or right-click on the task tray icon and choose "Open Cloud Drive website" from a pop-up menu.