Most of the time, I’m the guy who authors the show notes for the Herding Code Podcast. The workflow is relatively straight-forward: Jon shares the pre-production audio with me, I compete my write up and then ship the notes back to Jon for publishing with the edited audio. All file sharing is all done with shared folders in the Windows Live Mesh.
The director of my kid’s preschool was looking for a way to access her work computer from her home office. VPN connection? Remote desktop? FTP? Nope. I installed Windows Live Mesh in a matter of minutes, synchronized a number of folders and she was off and running. (The neat thing is she’s running a PC in the office and a Mac at home.)
I was using Dropbox before discovering Mesh. Dropbox is still very cool but I’m in and out of Mesh enough that it’s taken over. Actually I still have a Dropbox folder – it’s just being synched by Mesh now.
If you’re interested in giving Live Mesh a whirl, here’ are the notable links as found on the product’s site:
- What you need
- Create your mesh
- Sync folders
- Share folders
- Use your Live Desktop
- Connect to a remote computer
- Use a mobile phone
Good luck!
Is it still in Beta? Last time I used it, it kept deleting all of the files in my mesh. That only happens once or twice before you stop using it…
@Justin. Yes, it’s still in beta. I agree that Mesh doesn’t handle file deletion extremely well. Jon, for example, recently deleted some of his files which should not have mucked up my file synchronization, but it did. I’m not sure what is going on but it is a drag. It hasn’t happened enough to discourage me but I get your point. Thanks for the comment. Just curious — is there a product you are using instead?
I just started using Mesh today. I’ve been using Dropbox for a while now. Dropbox is really simple to use, whereas Mesh seems to have more features, but it’s also slightly more complicated to figure out. For example, it’s not clear how to move a folder on one computer that’s being sync’d from another computer.
Once you figure out how it works though, it works just as well as Dropbox. That’s my first impression at least.
I haven’t tested it extensively yet, including file deletion. I hope it’s as good as Dropbox all around.
[...] Are You Using Windows Live Mesh? – Good ways to use Live Mesh. [...]
[...] I have been using Windows Live Mesh for a while and even though there are some quirks I am happy with the product. That said, if Microsoft wants to merge these services together to form one super end-user experience, I’ll be the first in line. So, with little prompting, I installed the Live Sync Beta bits and abandoned Mesh without a second thought this past weekend. I was plugged into SkyDrive and reaping additional Sync benefits after spending only a quick 30 minutes on the install and folder re-synchronization. Small price to pay, I guess. [...]