If you have more than one computer, or are interested in accessing y
our computer's data from someone else's computer, or need to access your stuff from the road on a mobile phone, then you need Live Mesh. Have a PC and a MAC? Two PC's? Two MAC's? You need it.What is it? Live Mesh is software for your devices that keeps all of your stuff in synch. You put the software on each of your computers, designate which folders and/or files you want to share or "mesh" between your devices, and let it do the rest of the work. All of your designated files and folders automatically replicate themselves on each of your computers, and are stored locally in mesh folders on each computer's desktop. The best part? Each time you change a file, no matter where you change it, the file is automatically updated on all of the computers. They are local files on those computers, so they are available to you offline, and they load fast like local files should.
In addition to being stored on each of your computers, your stuff is also automatically stored in a "Live Desktop" in the cloud (Internet). That means your stuff is accessible to you from any Web browser. So if you are using a borrowed computer or a mobile phone with a browser, you get access to all of your stuff, automatically.
Here's how I use it. I have Live Mesh installed on my laptop, and also on the main desktop computer in our house. Traditionally, I have used my laptop mainly for work, while the desktop computer (which is shared with my wife) has most of my personal stuff. Now all of my work and personal stuff is available to me on both computers. I chose the relevant folders in my Documents area on each machine, right-clicked on each of the folders, and selected "Add folder to Live Mesh". Its that easy. Right away, the same folders appeared on the other computer and all of the files began to replicate and synch-up. And they have stayed in synch ever since, with no more effort on my part. No more editing documents and then emailing them to myself, using memory sticks, or other crazy methods to get my files from machine to machine. You can do this with several computers, and you can even share files among multiple users, with varying levels of permissions, if you want to.
In addition, all of the Live Mesh folders are available online, and accessible via browser from a borrowed computer. That's because they also synch to a "Live Desktop" in the cloud. The Live Desktop will currently support 5GB of storage for free. But there is no limit to how much data you can keep synched between your computers, if you choose not to also synch it to the Live Desktop.
Live Mesh also includes a remote access feature that works as well, or even better, than some of the others I have tested. From any device in your mesh, you can access and gain full remote-control of the other computers, and even transfer files between the computers.
Limitations and wishes (Live Mesh team, can you help me?)...
1>> I haven't been able to get Live Mesh to reliably synch very large folders. That's too bad, because I'd really like it to keep my iTunes library synched between devices. I dream of being able to download a song or video on one computer, and have it magically show up in the iTunes libraries of all of my most-often-used computers. Live Mesh seemed the perfect answer, but alas, it just isn't working yet, for me. My iTunes folder is about 20GB, when I exclude some of my movies. Live Mesh tries to synch them, and then simply fails after a while (yes, I have "Never with this Device" selected for the Live Desktop). So, I'll wait for the product to continue to evolve (or for Apple to get their act together and make library synching a feature of iTunes). Do you have a solution to this? If so, tell me!
2>> I have no direct way to access my Live Mesh from my iPhone. I can't get it to work from my Safari browser in the phone, and there isn't a dedicated app. So, I have enabled Orb Live, (an app so good I'll write about it separately) to see my Live Mesh folders. Do you have a different or better way to acccess your Live Mesh files via iPhone? Leave me a comment.
Interesting (or not) side note: Orb is running on the media PC near our big-screen TV. And that computer is networked with the desktop computer in my Live Mesh. So, I'm accessing my Live Mesh folders via iPhone using Orb, even though the machine that is running Orb isn't on my Live Mesh. Since computers on my home network share their folders using Windows Folder Sharing (allowing me to use our main desktop as a sort of server), I can access my Live Mesh folders on the main desktop via Orb, even though Orb isn't actually running on any of my Live Mesh computers. In other words, a folder can be both in your Live Mesh, and shared with traditional Windows folder sharing. Windows folder sharing doesn't replicate files across machines like Live Mesh does. It's purpose is to allow you to remotely access a folder on a machine, rather than replicate the files and make them local. Inside our house with its fast networking, that's the approach I prefer. This allows me to store nearly all of the files in our house on a single computer, so I don't have to have any backup mechanisms for any of the other computers. Why not just install Orb on the main desktop that is on my Live Mesh?Because Orb is also about streaming your live cable TV out to your devices via the web, and the one computer near my HDTV is the best one for that usage of Orb.
3>> Live Mesh really swamps my machines. I have noticed a HUGE delay (like, 30 seconds) on my system's bootup routines. It even slows down the process of coming out of standby. The hit to performance is not acceptable for a production product. I tolerate it in the beta, because the benefits are sooooo good, but the team has got to get this fixed. Ain't Nobody has a right to slow down my bootups and wake-ups...
Overall, this thing is a gem and I'm in "tell everyone" mode on it.
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