The Last Podcast

Microsoft send me an invitation to try out its new Live Mesh service last night and I have to say that I’m happily surprised by the quality of the current beta version (or ‘Tech Preview’ as Microsoft like to call it).

If you are unfamiliar with Mesh, TechCrunch did a good overview of the service and the technology behind it and so did ReadWriteWeb.

What is it and what does it do?

But to give a quick idea what Mesh is capable of right now, at least from the user perspective, I gather the best way to describe it is that it provides you with an online desktop and file synchronization services that allow you to keep specific files and folders in synch between different machines (only Windows for now, but a Mac version is coming soon). In some respects, it competes with Microsoft’s FolderShare and services like DropBox (which I highly recommend).

One thing you need to keep in mind here is that Live Mesh is part of an extensive online platform play by Microsoft that might, in the future, integrate Mesh with a more complete online desktop and file editing capabilities.

For this review, though, I will only be looking at purely from the perspective of a current user.

As of right now, Mesh allows you to synchronize up to 5GB of your files between various computers running XP or Vista (and, in the future, Windows Mobile phones and Macs) and, if you are using Internet Explorer, you can also remote control any of your machines that are running the Mesh synchronization software (it’s an ActiveX control, so it won’t run on Firefox).

The files you synchronize are also available on a virtual desktop, which features a news feed with all your updates and recent synchs, as well as a basic file browser that mimics the look and feel of Vista.

The Good

1. Mesh works as advertised. I synched a couple of folders between my desktop and laptop and it worked very smoothly and quickly. No problems there.
2. You get granular control over how and which files you want to synch.
3. When you open a folder that is set to be synched on your regular desktop a pop-out will appear to the right of the file browser with updates of how and when the last synch happened. You can also add messages to this - very useful if you are sharing this between different people and you need to pass a message along.
4. The look and feel is very clean, simple and intuitive and presents users with familiar desktop paradigms (if you are a Windows user, that is).
5. The remote control function works well and should be easy to use even for novice users. It also does a good job at scaling different screen sizes.

The Bad

1. No editing or file viewing capabilities (yet). I can’t imagine that Microsoft isn’t going to implement this in the future, but for now, you can’t even view a text file in Mesh, let alone a Word document or a pdf file. Only photos can be displayed in Mesh itself.
2. As of now, you can not just drag and drop files from your desktop onto the virtual desktop, but you have to go through an upload dialogue or right-click a file and add it to your synchronization settings. This feature will be added soon, though.
3. There is also no drag and drop in the virtual desktop itself, yet, either, which is annoying and limiting when you want to copy folders or files around.
4. I don’t quite understand why the designers didn’t stick to the desktop metaphor all the way through. Why, for example, when I click on ‘News’ in the top bar, am I taken away from the desktop instead of the desktop just opening a Window with the News feed (the News feed, by the way, is not an RSS reader by just gives you a list of the most recent changes).

How does it compare? Final Verdict?

(Microsoft already has various file synching products on the market with similar functionality. The question why that is the case if for a different post…)

As of right now I already use Microsoft’s Office Live Workspace to check my office documents in and out of the cloud and DropBox for most other files. Office Live Workspace has more capabilities for document control (checking documents in and out) and can display (but not edit) MS Office files.

Dropbox is slightly easier to set up, but basically provides the same set of functions as Mesh, but without the online desktop. Downloading files from the Dropbox server directly is also relatively difficult (they actually send you an email with your files as an attachment)- something Mesh does far more intuitively.

FolderShare also has similar functionality, but puts more emphasis on, well, sharing files and doesn’t have any viewing or editing capabilities.

Mesh does what it does well. The current product isn’t highly exciting, but Microsoft is just laying the foundation for a larger, more capable platform here. If you don’t use any synching software yet and you are only using Windows machines, I can recommend Mesh - especially with the remote desktop capabilities built in. If you already use a service like DropBox, FolderShare, or (if you are mostly an Office user) the Office Live Workspace, then Mesh isn’t going to offer you much beyond that.

If you don’t - and you get an invite to use it in its beta phase - it’s well worth a look (but remember - it’s a beta phase - you might not want to use it as the only backup of your dissertation!).

Sidenote: I understand that a lot of people might be nervous about having their data live on a Microsoft server. Maybe I’m not paranoid enough, but it is not something I am very worried about.