Windows Phone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"It's fair to say that Microsoft's product offerings are something of a mess. Windows Live Sync and Live Mesh overlap (the difference being that the former is PC-to-PC, the latter is PC-to-cloud), Live Mesh and My Phone overlap (they're both device-to-cloud), and SkyDrive, Live Mesh, and My Phone all overlap (they all incorporate their own cloud storage)."

This article overstates the case slightly - Live Mesh was always a technology preview, nothing more. Live Sync is the consumer-facing sync product from Windows Live, and the new version is using Mesh on the back-end, so it's easy to see that Microsoft's long term plan was to migrate from the original FolderShare code to Mesh. Now that's not to say that the new version of Live Sync is trouble-free...in fact, I think it's almost a disaster in terms of performance. And the limit of 2 GB on Skydrive sync is puzzling...why not let them use the full 25 GB offered by Skydrive and become a market leader in one fell swoop? Maybe there are concerns of people using their 25 GB for piracy and copyright theft?I expect Mesh to be shut down as a service before the end of the year, and hopefully the Skydrive storage component will get increased over time. I think it makes sense for the phone sync component to stand alone for now - it's based on an acquisition by Microsoft - though I hope it comes into alignment with the other services over the next year. Read more...

"In another variation on the confusing naming theme that has become a trademark of Windows Live, Windows Live Wave 4 (or Windows Live 2011, if you prefer) introduces a newly revamped Live Mesh, which is replacing the current Live Sync (which itself was an updated FolderShare, a ByteTaxi product Microsoft bought in 2005). Live Sync 2011 is functionally quite similar to Live Mesh, minus the mobile component that never got out of limited beta. It features much improved peer-to-peer sync of your computers, a remote desktop function, and SkyDrive sync with some built-in sync capabilities for Office and Internet Explorer settings."

Live Mesh seemed to be the answer to my prayers when it was put into CTP a few years ago. Finally I had a way to sync files to my Windows Mobile device without having to hook up to a computer. Sadly the software was left in an initial state far too long and has finally become the back end for Windows Live Sync, another great program I used to use extensively (previously known as FolderShare).