Why I Love Windows Live Mesh

It could be argued that I have too many computers. There is my cool demo machine – Samsung 9. There is my backup machine. There is my Windows 8 machine (which I am using more and more and which I may upgrade my demo machine to real soon now). And there is my personally owned laptop. Oh and I am expecting a tablet real soon now! I tend to grab which ever one suits my current needs and goals and get to work. So here is the issue. Suppose the files I want to use are not on that computer? That would be frustrating at best and really bad at worst. It’s hard to anticipate what you will need on a business trip for example. Or during a meeting. And with code, well, I am always looking to reuse code. So what’s one to do? For me the answer is Windows Live Mesh.

With Windows Live Mesh I sync my key data folders across all of my computers seamlessly and automatically. So for example if I am fooling around with some code while watching TV and want to be able to access it later on a work computer I just save the project into the synced folder called My Code that I created. All of my blog posts (posted and in draft form) are in a My Blog Posts and I can get to them from any computer at any time without me having to do anything special.

Of course another cool feature is that I can share folders with other individuals as well. We all get access to the latest copies of files without tedious emailing, sneaker netting or issues with “who has the latest draft?” I’ve really come to depend on this tool. And that doesn’t include all of the remote access features!

You may have seen the Windows TV commercial featuring a couple stranded at the airport with nothing to do. Thankfully they were able to go "to the cloud" to access their home PC and watch a recorded show on their laptop. How exactly did they do this? They used Windows Live Mesh.

This is just the tool for people with multiple computers. Situations like one computer at work or school and another one at home for example. Or school/work team projects. I don’t know how I lived without it.

You hear talk about “the cloud” all the time and think “well that is for big businesses” and to some extent it is. But there is a more personal side and Live Mesh is part of that. Oh and its free!