Microsoft Live Mesh review

Microsoft might not have been first to the Cloud storage party, but it was Live Mesh that made online storage and synchronisation seem like the next big thing.

Live Mesh's most obvious benefits now are the same as they ever were: XP and Vista PCs - and now Apple Macs - can be hooked into a "mesh" where files and folders are synchronised, and there's a Live Desktop stored on an online server too.

Local folders can be added to the mesh with a single right-click, and when opened they're accompanied by a Live Mesh clip-on window, complete with tabbed areas containing news on any recent synchronisation activity.

Notifications provide you with updates as they happen, making Live Mesh particularly useful for collaborative working. If you don't like what someone else is doing to a file on your mesh, you can decide what and how much they can view or edit in a matter of seconds.

Behind the scenes, Live Mesh also supports peer-to-peer file transfer across local networks, making synchronising files across a LAN very fast, while transfer speeds are quicker than any rival service. Live Mesh reliably spots and updates changed files within minutes or seconds.

Best of all, it's also now possible to bypass the Live Desktop. This makes Live Mesh a great way of synchronising space-hungry files such as presentations or video without having to worry about the 5GB storage limit. And it's also the only service on test with remote desktop functionality, allowing you to access and control one PC linked with another.

The most disappointing aspect of Live Mesh remains the Live Desktop web interface. It feels slow and clunky, and the media controls are basic. Cross-platform and even cross-browser support is another bugbear. Linux remains unsupported, while mobile device support is theoretically limited to Windows Mobile devices.

And, lest we forget, Live Mesh is still in beta with no support for when things go wrong and the threat that, when it comes out of beta, Microsoft may start charging. But, it would have to charge an awful lot for our opinion to change. Live Mesh may not be the best Cloud storage service in many areas, but overall it's easy to use, fast, and highly effective.

Author: Stuart Andrews