Foul Writer’s World

Following on from my Microsoft gets Meshy post, I finally got my invitation to join the technical preview. I will endeavour to give you my first impressions of this early release. But first of all a quick recap. Live Mesh is Microsoft’s first entry into cluster computing. Live Mesh provides a platform to allow users to link together all their devices and use them seemlessly. This includes sharing files and folders, but also has the advanced benefit of being able to control any of your attached devices remotely, provided they are on of course. 

Inorder to get the full benefits of Live Mesh you need to download and install the client to each of your computers you want to link. This process takes between 5 – 10 minutes per PC (Macs and Mobile phone clients haven’t been released yet). Although, it is possible the access shared files and folders directly from the mesh.com web site. The web interface for the time being is a bit clunky. For example, at present files can only be uploaded one at a time. Microsoft gives each Live Mesh user 5 GB of storage space, for most this is likely to fill up pretty quickly, it will be interesting to see what type of business model Microsoft adapts to increasing the storage capacity, will they go down a subscription route? Who knows.

With the client set up, everytime you boot your machine the Live Mesh client logs in to the service. A list of recent news is displayed. This news includes information about any files you or other Mesh users you have authorized have uploaded to the shared storage space. This is particularly useful if you use Live Mesh as part of a team. Folders can be created on your machine, that are automatically synchronized with your online storage space. It is then possible to create the same folders on any of your linked devices which will magically be updated with the files found in your online storage space. This means when working at home completing it at work no longer requires you to send the files by email, or use memory sticks to move the files. I know this will be handy for me.

The downside to Live Mesh in this release is the rather long synchronize times and the abismal refreash rates when accessing your devices remotely. Hopefully this will be improved and tweaked over time. I for one am looking forward to the next big release of Live Mesh to see what additional features are added. For now to find out more about Live Mesh visit the web site at www.mesh.com.

Other related information

• Microsoft get Meshy
• Windows 7 launch
• XP is dead. Long live Microsoft
• Working towards a different future for my technical communications
• The tools I use
• Dropbox. A neat alternative to Microsoft Mesh
• Working with new Technical Writers
• SP1 for Vista released for Windows Update
• Windows XP Service Pack 3 goes GOLD