Clearing up the confusion over Windows Live Sync

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

Last week we told you how Microsoft was bringing its popular Live Mesh out of beta, with the launch of a new service called Live Sync.

Unbeknown to me, Microsoft already offers a service called Live Sync. Consequently, several of you rushed off to sign up for the existing Live Sync, only to be disappointed when it didn’t contain the features we said it did. The old Live Sync (also known as Folder Share) only synchronises files between two PCs that are powered on, while the Live Sync we wrote about promised such goodies as cloud synchronisation, online storage and the ability to share bookmarks and Office settings between different PCs.

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Live Mesh – the key to the cloud?

Friday, December 4th, 2009

About a year ago I wrote a piece about my initial experiences and first impressions of Microsoft Live Mesh. Essentially I was a huge fan and remain so. In fact I’m now even more excited about the technology and can see it playing a crucial role in the advent of, and successful transition to, cloud-based computing.

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The 10 free programs I can’t live without

Monday, November 30th, 2009

I had the delightful task of rebuilding my working life last Monday, as my hard disk decided that would be the perfect time to die. And I realised I hadn’t actually synchronised my online backup system since I last tested a new service. Clever. With time against me – the magazine went to press on Wednesday night – it quickly became clear which programs I desperately needed to install.

1. Paint.NET

Windows 7 may now include a version of Paint complete with a fancy Ribbon interface, but it still doesn’t offer the features I need to quickly enhance photos and mould screenshots to my whims. Paint.NET does, and it also supports plug-ins for RAW files (and more), making it my top photo-editing choice. (more…)

Microsoft Live Mesh: Gateway to Paradise

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

And so regular listeners to the PC Pro podcast, and anyone who read our Ten Techs to Watch in 2009 feature, will know that we really rather like Microsoft’s Live Mesh utility. But we haven’t actually written anything specifically about it yet, so I’m going to tell you why Microsoft has, for the first time ever, produced a piece of software that I would call brilliant. Honestly, genuinely brilliant. It’s currently in beta but that doesn’t mean you should waste any time in installing it. (more…)

Ten brilliant things the internet has done

Monday, January 19th, 2009

The news this morning that Belkin has been paying people to write positive reviews on Amazon will inevitably undermine “user reviews” on websites, but for me they’re still a valuable resource – especially for areas where there aren’t any “professional” reviews to fall back on.

The thing is, you need to look out for the pattern of a real review as opposed to the one someone’s churned out for the sake of a few pence (or cents, in Belkin’s case) or – in the case of book reviews on Amazon – where the author, publisher or friend of either has posted the review themselves.

Anyway, to fight back against the inevitable backlash I thought I’d quickly write about ten brilliant things the internet has done. (more…)

How to get the most from your new laptop

Friday, December 26th, 2008

If Santa’s dropped off a pristine new laptop or netbook on his rounds this year, then you’ll want to make sure you get the very best from it. With many manufacturers choosing to add value to their portables by cramming them with useless crapware and enough attention-seeking free trials to paralyse the average supercomputer, it pays to give your new arrival a bit of a TLC. We’ve thought of a few straightforward steps to make your laptop run smoothly from day one.

Firstly, don’t be shy of removing all that crapware. Much as we all love to have our sparkly new laptops pre-filled with junk, it is worth going over the list of installed programs with a fine toothcomb to weed out the useless from the useful. Do you really need that Microsoft Office 60-day trial, or that 30-day demo of Norton AntiVirus? No, you don’t. And don’t forget to look through each icon in the system tray and ask yourself whether it’s ever going to come in useful. Trim the pointless items from your startup folder, or better still uninstall them completely, and your laptop will start faster than ever.

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First impressions of Live Mesh – wow!

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

Like many computer users I have a couple of systems for work and home use and a notebook for travelling and pretending to work in the garden. And of course Sod’s law means that whichever computer you are currently using is the one without the data that you need.

The solution is to have some sort of synchronization system. Most users rely on copying files to physical middlemen such as CD-RWs and USB sticks or to virtual middlemen such as FTP sites or online services such as BT’s Digital Vault or Acrobat.com. However this manual approach is awkward and unreliable. Really the system needs to be automatic. Which is where Microsoft’s Live Mesh comes in.

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Live Mesh vs Dropbox

Friday, July 4th, 2008

Keeping files synchronised across different PCs is, frankly, a pain in the rump. You work on a document at home over the weekend, only to forget to drop it on a USB stick before Monday morning, and end up missing a deadline. Or you’ve got photo libraries stored on two different home PCs, with different albums in each.

Microsoft’s Live Mesh and online start-up Dropbox have come up with similar answers to this problem, offering online services that keep your files in synch across multiple PCs. Both are at the invite-only test phase at present, but we’ve wormed out way into the private betas. Here’s how they compare. (more…)