These are the Online Services I Rely On (Premium)

When it comes to paid and free online services, I’m usually looking for cross-device and -platform availability, with as little lock-in as possible. Here’s a quick rundown of the key online services I rely on.
Identity services
While all of us maintain multiple online accounts, these are my primary online accounts, and the ones that provide what I think of as identity services. They’re tied to app and/or content stores, and/or to a broad swath of related first- and third-party services that I use regularly.

Microsoft account and Google account. These are my primary identity services, and each is tied to an email address that I use regularly as well as various online services, applications, content, and PC or device management of some kind.

Apple account and Amazon account. These are somewhat secondary to my Microsoft and Google accounts in that they are still important but are, for the most part, tied to content ecosystems like the Apple App and iTunes Stores, Amazon.com and Amazon Prime, and so on. That said, my Apple account is important for use with Apple devices like iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and it does provide identity services on them, even though I don’t really use too many Apple services (beyond iCloud storage for device backups).
Productivity
My productivity-based usage is split between my PC-based work, which is mostly Microsoft-oriented, and my mobile activities, which are split between Google and Microsoft.

Microsoft Office 365 Home. At $100 per year, Office 365 Home is an unparalleled bargain, and it provides full access to the Office desktop and mobile apps and 1 TB of OneDrive storage for all 4 members of my family (plus two others if I wanted) across multiple PCs and mobile devices.

Microsoft OneDrive. I use Microsoft’s cloud service on all my PCs (for document access) and smartphones (for photo backup). It is key to my daily workflow. On Windows, for example, all of my data is stored in OneDrive and access via File Explorer integration. I don’t keep anything on a single PC.

Grammarly. As a writer, Grammarly has emerged as a key tool that I use every day. For most of the past few years, this has occurred via its Chrome extension, so that articles I write are checked as they’re posted to WordPress. But with my recent switch back to Microsoft Word---which I’ll be writing about soon---I’m able to use a Grammarly add-in for Microsoft Word to improve my writing as I write. This is key, because Grammarly routinely catches grammar issues that Word does not.

Google Assistant and Google Home. I’ve chosen Google Assistant as my personal digital assistant over Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, or Samsung Bixby. So I use this assistant on my phones and in my home via Google Home smart speakers.

Google Photos. While I use both OneDrive and Google Photos to backup my phone-based photos, Google Photos has emerged as my key solution for personal photos and home videos. I really enjoy th...

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