After many years of averseness to Microsoft, I really loved the innovations and the new style of Windows 8.
I convinced a lot of people of the advantage of the new system.

And personally I switched to Surface RT and a Windows Phone just recently.

But the new Skydrive implementation in Windows 8.1, where having to log in with a Microsoft account to enable Skydrive, destroyed a lot. And I start to regret having switched. I even didn't update on all PCs, just because of that.

I have no problem using my MS account on some systems, e.g. my Surface Tablet.
But on some systems it's just not possible.

Here are some reasons:

1) at home I'm not able to log in to my NAS anymore, as it doesn't allow longer usernames (which would be necessary when using my email address as the username)

2) in my company we are using local accounts (no domain accounts) on all our PCs in the network. And these accounts are installed on all our servers etc.
But as I understand only domain accounts can be connected with a Microsoft account.
Some time ago I established the usage of Skydrive especially in combination with OneNote in my company. But with Windows 8.1 this isn't really possible anymore, thus we will probably shift to Evernote and another cloud solution.

The alternative use of Skydrive via web browser is ridiculous and useless.

Just give us back the option to sign in to Skydrive separately, maybe using the already existing option in the PC settings.