Solo Technology

Last Monday the Mesh Team blog announced the “Technology Preview” for Windows Live Mesh.

What’s Mesh? Well think of it as a combination of FolderShare, Hamachi, Remote Desktop or LogMeIn and any number of web based desktops and storage systems (remember SkyDrive?). The post announcing it has an apt paragraph summing it up:

I don’t know about you, but I’ve got two work laptops, a home PC, a SmartPhone, a Media Center, and a growing list of new devices. Unfortunately, at least initially, every new device I add makes my life a little harder not easier. There have been countless times where I’ve been in a situation where “that file is on my work machine” or “that photo is on my SmartPhone” or “I can’t access it because I’m offline.”

And that’s really what it’s all about. Add your machines and devices to your “mesh” and you can get some file sharing and remote access going. Not at any of your “meshed” machines? Just log into your Live Desktop and access shared files and (if running IE) even initiate remote control.

What machines can you currently use? Just XP and Vista based. This’ll get much more exciting (for me) when it is extended to Windows Mobile and Macs. Could we hope for remote desktop abilities from a Windows Mobile device? Dare we?

What do you get when you install the client stuff? Another tray icon and this little applet pictured to the right. From it you can see and manage all your mesh devices. Connect to them for remote access or manage the shares and syncs.

I think the potential here is huge — and I wonder about how it’ll be priced. Or worry, rather.

Folder Sharing

If you get into the technology preview, you’ll have 5GB of online storage to play with. When you setup folders as shared, their storage goes against that 5 GB. You can setup some basic syncing options with that shared folder and your other mesh devices, but it looks like it (currently) always will be also be synced to the online desktop. Seems like that’ll change soon though as there’s a popular feedback item asking for the ability to sync PC to PC and not to the online desktop.

Note: this is not currently a full-on replacement for FolderShare (which uses no server storage). However, if that feedback is implemented, I can’t help but wonder about FolderShare’s future…

First bug I’ve noticed is that even though I’ve marked a machine as “never share”, each time the Live Mesh client is started, it re-creates the share link on that machine — and I then have to clear it again.

That aside, the sync stuff seems to work pretty well. Quickly even.

Live Desktop

The Live Desktop is accessible from any browser. No client software necessary. From here you can manage your devices and shares.

Need to get a shared file when you’re not at one of your devices? This is how you’d go about it. Log into the site and grab it out of the share (assuming, of course, that you are syncing to the Live Desktop as discussed above).

Aside from that, I’m not entirely sure what else is here. Doesn’t seem like much else yet.

Live Remote Desktop

The remote desktop stuff could be huge–when it works. Right now, I’ve only ever been able to remote desktop when both machines are in the same building… For instance, at work my laptop can control my work desktop. But when at home, it can’t. At home my laptop can control my home desktop — but not from work.

Now, I’ll confess that I haven’t done my due diligence here — perhaps I need to do some firewall shenanigans. But if that’s the case, the usefulness of this feature drops to almost nil.

Now, when it works, it works nicely. Good scaling to handle windowed mode and various resolutions and, of course, you can also go into a full desktop mode with the remote. I like it. In fact, the regular Microsoft Remote Desktop client could take some cues from this thing. It has some great features.

Verdict?

Right now things are a bit rough. Then again, it’s still limited and still a preview so who knows where it goes from here? I look forward to being able to accomplish more with the remote desktop client and truly hope to see it on my windows mobile phone as well.

Much potential here.

4 Responses to “Microsoft Mesh Beta: First Look”

1. Shantanu Ghosh on April 28th, 2008 11:35 pm
   

   Maybe confusing for users who already use other forms of networking and file sharing. If only MSFT could throw out all of the legacy stuff, they could do so much more with features such as these.

2. mike hinds on April 29th, 2008 8:48 pm
   

   Hmm this kinda looks like Yoics

3. Chris on April 30th, 2008 10:29 am
   

   @Shantanu - it does get a bit confusing, I agree.

   @mike - ya know? I’d never even heard of Yoics before your comment. Looking at yoics.com and yoics.net: Are they two different things? I might have to look into this a bit more. Thanks!

4. James on May 4th, 2008 4:03 am
   

   Mike,
   Some interesting points on the RDP tools. Very nice but also pretty insecure going over the web. Have you thought about building a permanent ssh tunnel to push your sessions through? I think most decent firewalls support ssh now.

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