A better way to connect remotely and synch files - Microsoft's Live Mesh.

Here at APC Pro we're often out of the office and having to connect to our PCs and network from all kinds of places. So we use Citrix's gotomypc as fundamental tool of our trade. But the technology preview of Microsoft's Live Mesh  already leaves it in the shade and points to a future in which all your devices are permanently connected and accessible anywhere.

We’d originally heard about Live Mesh as Ray Ozzie’s special project. Ozzie is Microsoft’s chief software architect and Live Mesh is his idea of Microsoft’s future beyond desktop-bound computing.  In essence, Live Mesh is a web operating system based on a software + web services architecture, where your desktop lives on the web, and your PCs, Macs and Smartphones (and their applications) are attached to it, accessible from anywhere, all able to see each other and able to synchronise information.

For now Macs and Smartphones can't be signed up to Live Mesh, which is still in it technology preview state, but your PC can, and the preview version of Live Mesh is already extremely useful. We've found it could already replace our gotomypc application.

In this article, we show how easy it is to set up your PCs onto Live Mesh for remote connection and file synchronisation.

To sign up to Live Mesh, I went to Microsoft Connect and clicked on the Live Mesh tile at the bottom of the page to register as a previewer. A day later I received an email allowing me to register using my Windows Live ID. I went to www.mesh.com to log in (see page below).

At the stage, the service works only on IE, surprise surprise.  When you connect to the Live Mesh Desktop using your Live ID you get exactly that, a Live Desktop (below). None of my devices are connected to it yet. The authentication and authorisation behind Live Mesh are explained in this excellent blog posting by the Live Mesh team.

You can quickly populate the desktop, by creating folders and uploading files. In this preview version, there is 5GB of online storage, which is the same amount as Microsoft makes available in its Skydrive online storage, at Windows Live.




When uploaded, the file show in the Live Mesh desktop folder and my action in the desktop history box below. You can share folders with friends, and any time someone adds or makes a change to a folder, the action will be displayed.




Now for the good bit: adding my PC to the Live Mesh. I click on the Devices button in the Live Mesh desktop top menu bar and I'm taken to the devices screen below.




When I click on Install, it downloads the Live Mesh client to my PC.




On my desktop PC a little box pops up in the corner, monitoring the intallation.





Once installed, the Live Mesh client asks you to sign in your PC to Live Mesh and give it a name. Then, voila! the PC (Emagen-PC) shows up on the Live Mesh network. 




Now, I want to install Live Mesh on my work PC, so when at that machine, I use the same procedure as for my home PC. Once both are installed, they appear on Live Mesh (below).





Having installed my work PC onto Live Mesh, I now want to connect to it remotely from my home PC. Back at home, I  begin the login process to my work machine.




I hit connect, and my work desktop appears in all its glory. I am connected live to it from home, just as I would be if I used gotomypc or if I were actually sitting in front of the machine.



Not only can I access my work machine from home and do real work on it (speed depends on your connection but it's certainly beareable and could easily be used to do work remotely), but I can also synchronise folders across both PCs and any others that I will add.  That's pretty useful start for Live Mesh. 

One of Live Mesh's developers, Mike Zintel, Product Unit Manager, Mesh and Storage Platform, gives an excellent insight into what Live Mesh really aims to be:

"At the core of Mesh is concept of a customer’s mesh, or collection of devices, applications and data that an individual owns or regularly uses. The Mesh Account Service persists the relationship among these resources and authorizes access to them. The mesh is the foundation for a model where customers will ultimately license applications to their mesh, as opposed to an instantiation of Windows, Mac or a mobile account or a web site.  Such applications will be seamlessly installed and run from their mesh and application settings persisted across their mesh. The device ring inside of the Live Desktop is a simple visualization of the mesh, and provides a view of all devices and current device availability. The Live Mesh platform provides the ability for applications to connect to any other device, regardless of network topology (network transparency), within the mesh. This infrastructure enables the Live Mesh Remote Desktop experience today."

Live Mesh contains other features we'll cover later, but you can see where it's going.
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