When I go to my classes I bring my Samsung NC10 netbook since it’s pretty much my ‘notebook’ for all my classes. I save my notes to my netbook and then transfer it to my desktop at home via a USB flash drive or if I forget my USB flash drive I send an e-mail to myself and download the files from there. Honestly I don’t like it, for me it has too many steps involved just to keep your documents synchronized. I wanted something easier…something where I can just drop and drag files into and it’ll automatically synchronize it with my other devices.
Well hello Live Mesh! Microsoft’s new Live service called Live Mesh may probably be a mobile person’s dream come true. It’s a data synchronization system from Microsoft that allows any kind of file and folder to be shared and synchronized across multiple devices and platforms.
You need to have a Microsoft Live account in order to use Live Mesh if you don’t have one, just sign up for a new one. Once you’re done with that, just go to https://www.mesh.com/Welcome/Default.aspx and sign in with your Microsoft Live Account. You’ll then be taken to the Devices page where you can view your current devices that have Live Mesh installed and the Live Desktop. This is also the place where you can add a new device in your Live Mesh.
To add a new device, just click on Add Device and you will then download the Live Mesh installer. Remember you need to install Live Mesh on each computer that you want to add, I wanted to add one of my laptops and one of my desktops to Live Mesh so I downloaded the installer twice and insatlled it on each of them.
Once you’re done installing them, all you have to do is sign-in afterwards to be able to synchronize your files and folders.
After you sign-in, Live Mesh will ask you if you want your current device to be added to Live Mesh. Since I’m on my laptop right now, I’m going to add it. I did the same thing on my desktop.
Once you’re done adding your devices, it’ll then show up on the Devices link in Live Mesh. As you can see I both have my HP DV9500t laptop and my Lian Li PC7 Plus desktop added.
Now that everything’s setup and working properly how do we start adding up files and synchronizing them? You need to go to your Live Desktop for that to happen.
Once you’re in your Live Desktop you can create folders to better organize your files. I created a Documents folder for my documents. I set it to be synchronized to my devices when files are added or modified. Once you’re done doing that it’ll show up as a normal Windows Vista folder in your web browser. You can then start adding your files and folders.
I won’t be adding my files and folders using the web browser, instead I will just be dropping off the files to the Live Mesh folders on my desktop – Live Mesh automatically creates folders and places them to your local desktop whenever you create one in Live Desktop.
Let’s start dropping off my documents into the Documents folder on my HP DV9500t laptop. Just remember I’m doing all of these stuff on my HP DV9500t laptop, all I did to my Lian Li PC7 Plus desktop is install Live Mesh and that’s it.
Now just wait a few seconds and you’ll start seeing some animation on the Live Mesh taskbar icon indicating that it’s synchronizing your files right now to all enabled devices.
Here’s how it looks like on my Lian Li PC7 Plus desktop.
And if you open the Documents folder, you’ll see the exact same file! It works!
Oh and did I ever say that you get 5GB of space for free? That’s 3GB more compared to Drop Box’s 2GB. Another feature that I like about Live Mesh is the ability to do a Remote Desktop connection to any of the devices you have in your Live Mesh that supports it. The next couple of pictures shows me connecting to my Lian Li PC7 Plus desktop from my HP DV9500t laptop.
