Microsoft Live Mesh

Microsoft's Live Mesh is an interesting project and it is another type of cloud computing service that aims to make your files available anywhere and on any device provided it has an internet connection. At the moment it only works on Windows PCs, but since most computer users in the world currently use them, it's not so bad.

Support for mobile phones and Apple Macs is promised soon though. Everyone has a mobile phone and the top models are very capable hand-held devices, so it will be useful to be able to access files from anywhere - mobile phone access is much more widespread than Wi-Fi. Even Mac users might be tempted away from MobileMe, which has a similar iDisk service.

When you sign in at Live Mesh you'll be prompted to add a device and you can download a small program for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows XP/Vista. You can also access your online desktop too. You get 5Gb of storage space for free and the really cool thing is that when you create a folder on your online desktop, it is replicated on all desktop of all the systems that you connect to Live Mesh with.

Normally folders on the Windows desktop are yellow, but you'll see a blue one and this is a Live Mesh folder. Any files you create or delete in here are copied transparently in the background to all other PCs with Live Mesh installed. What's more, there's a log window that records every action so you can see what has been done and when. It upens automatically when you open the blue Live Mesh folder on the Windows desktop.

It's an incredibly useful service if you work on multiple computers because you can keep your work files in the blue Live Mesh folder on the desktop and no matter which PC you use, you'll always see the latest files. You just open a file, make any changes that are necessary, save it and it's available on every other PC you use without you having to do anything special.

One thing you must remember though, is to give Live Mesh time to synchronise. It takes a little time to update the contents of the blue folder and this morning for example, I booted up and immediately accessed a file only to find it was an old version. I closed it, waited a few seconds and checked again. It was gone - because I had deleted it on another PC earlier. After another few seconds the up to date version that I had created on another PC was available.

Obviously Live Mesh was working through the actions that had taken place and until internet transfers become instantaneous, this update delay will always exist. I'll just have to go and make a cup of coffee after switching on my PC to make sure it has time to sync. Live Mesh even works if you boot up Windows on a Mac too. It'll be even more useful - to me anyway - when there's a native Mac application.