How fly is Microsoft Live Mesh?

31 Oct 2008

So here is the scenario. I have a crap load of computers. Any given day, it’s very likely that my grubby little hands touch three Windows Vista desktops, one Windows Vista laptop, a Windows XP laptop, two Mac desktops and a Mac laptop. I also carry a Windows Mobile phone. All in all that is 9 devices that I might use to create or consume files.

What Does It Do?

Upon logging into my Live Mesh account, I see a browser Window that looks something like this, well exactly like this:

The circle you see is all of the devices that I have connected to my Mesh network. (As you can see a few of my computers are not on my Mesh network) You can also see that a few of my devices, my laptops, are shown as unavailable.

Each device has different capabilities depending on the platform. The following table shows what you can do with Mesh depending on the system you are using:

Operating System	Capability
Windows XP and Vista	File Syncing and Full Remote Desktop
Mac OS 10.3.9+	File Syncing
Windows Mobile 6	File Syncing

So while the Remote Desktop feature works fantastic, right now it’s limited only to Windows XP and Vista, it does work very well over the web though and if those are the environments you use it’s a great feature.

The above image shows a Live Mesh folder through the web interface

The above image shows the same folder on a Windows Desktop.

The real bread and butter of Live Mesh is available on all platforms and that is file syncing. Let me give you a scenario that I cooked up to show you exactly what you could do with Live Mesh:

How Can It Be Used?

So I just moved to a new area and I am looking for a new house. Today I have a few houses to look at that I might be interested in. So while I am sitting home listening to music on Zune Pass (this is going to be an over-zealous Microsoft demo can you tell?) and locating the listings on-line, I am also entering the generic details like Address, # of bedrooms/baths, square footage, etc. into a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet that I happen to be saving into a Mesh enabled folder on my computer.

I finish looking at the listings and hop in the car to check them out. Now, since the Mesh enabled folder on my Windows Vista desktop computer is synchronized to my Windows Mobile phone, I open up the spreadsheet I just created to type the first address into my GPS. That’s right, the file is already there and only enough time for me to walk to your car has elapsed. Not bad!

So now I am at the first location and I think it’s a great place but there are a few things that I want to talk to an inspector about as well as a few things I want to take photos of for my own information. I pop back out my Windows Mobile phone and snap five or ten photos to help job my memory later.

I repeat this pattern while looking at the next few houses until lunch when I stop at Starbucks for a tofu wheat flavorless but very trendy bagel and coffee for a working lunch (I really stopped at McDonalds, shhhh). I pop out my Macbook Pro (because you are in Starbucks after all, status quo yo!) and re-open my spreadsheet I have been using all morning and add a few notes and attach the photos that I took this morning, the same photos that have just finished syncing to my Macbook via Live Mesh, and resave the spreadsheet.

I continue my afternoon looking at more houses and go home and update the spreadsheet with the new information how I did earlier and this time I save it to my shared folder.

It just so happens I have an aunt who is a real estate agent and I decide I want her opinion on the houses that I am looking at, but we live very far apart and don’t have much time to catch up, so I resave my spreadsheet to a folder that I have created on Live Mesh for us to use and add her as a member to the folder. She goes to the web, logs in, opens the spreadsheet, adds her notes to my houses and photos and saves it back.

I look at her notes in my spreadsheet and start to make an informed decision.

Summary

Now consider this scenario for a second. Look what all was done with media on several different devices in different locations. No copying, thumb drive transporting, emailing, waiting. It’s all nearly instant. I can work how I want to work. Everything I need is available no matter where I am or which device I am using. That’s just the beginning of the power of the Windows Live Mesh network.

If you haven’t yet used it, go to www.mesh.com, set up your own account, and see Mesh for yourself. It’s an amazing technology.

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