Last week, I got accepted into the Live Mesh Tech Preview (also known as Beta.) I had only heard a little bit about it from various websites and podcasts and it sounded and looked like an interesting service. Live Mesh is basically cloud storage, with basically all the same functionality as Dropbox except with a bit more added.

When you download the client, which is around 2MB in size, the installation starts in the background. This took quite a while to install, and even other people I know have commented on that. There is no progress indicator or anything so you are expected to sit back and wait for it to just do its thing. The only reason I can think of for the lengthy installation time is that it probably downloads the actually application off the internet, similar to how the other Windows Live services do it. I really dislike this and would prefer to download the actual install file manually. This was the only issue I had with Mesh, everything else is pretty much positive.

You are again greeted with a new folder on your computer, except here it goes in your User directory. This is basically where you will get access to everything in your Live Mesh. When you create a new folder, it goes in there and any files synchronized between your computer and the cloud are put here. Another interesting thing is that any folders outside here that you wish to synchronize, their shortcut will appear in the directory. This is good as it makes it easy to manage what is going on in the Live Desktop and other computers that are synchronized.

Synchronization with folders is quite fast, with information on progress of the upload and download. If you only synchronize one file, it happens so fast you wouldn’t even notice it going on in the background. You get 5GB storage which is plenty of space for backing up Documents and a few other files. Its not ideal for video or loads of images, but if you had those types of files, you probably wouldn’t want to back them up online anyway (unless you have a fat pipe.) You can synchronize between your computer, the Live Desktop, and other computer. This is great because it means that your Documents folder can be synchronized between multiple computers, and the cloud.

The Live Desktop is the way you access your files and folders on the web. Once you log on, you are greeted with a very straight forward user interface. The thing that makes it so straight forward, is the fact it looks like a very basic Windows desktop, with folders on the desktop that are folders you have synced to the Live Desktop. Clicking the folder will open a window that looks and operates very similar to Windows Explorer does. From here you can view items in the folders as well as make changes, make new folders and upload.

I also tried the image viewer. As I clicked on a picture in Firefox, I was in for a rude awakening, you need Silverlight 2 to use the photo browser, and at this stage, you cannot get SL2 for Firefox. I understand this is in beta so its not much of an issue and shouldn’t be for too long. In Internet Explorer however, it looked and worked pretty well, it had the thumbnails at the top, and you could see the image and use the familiar forward, backwards and play buttons to go through the pictures and start and stop a slideshow. I did find it to be a little slow to load a bunch of relatively small images, but that could have been due to a number of factors.

There are a whole heap of options that are not available yet and at this stage it is Windows only, but they do plan for a Mac client for synchronization. I was very happy with this service and it was done really well. If it is this good at the beta stage, its going to be one hell of a service when it is out of beta and open to the public. There are a few things that I have missed do talk about such as syncing to two machines and remote desktop and such, but at this stage, I have yet to play around with that. You can hear about those from other people, when I cover this again when it is out of beta with more features and functionality, or you can go and try them yourself. I would highly recommend this service to every Windows user out there because it is that great.

For the past few months, since a little while after I got my new computer, I set up Remote Desktop on my old desktop computer so I could log in and use it from inside my laptop. This is a tool that I have seen, but never really knew how to use, or wanted to use. But now that I have a portable computer, it is nice to control the desktop from anywhere in the house. This little gem that is built into Windows is a fantastic tool.

It was a little time consuming to get it set up because the desktop only had one user account. This made me have to create my own user account, with a password, so I could log in and control the computer remotely. I also had to use a piece of software to hide the user so the computer stays logging into the main account when the computer is turned on. After that, the software is great.

Probably the two reason I use this the most, is to administrate the desktop and do necessary maintenance, start uTorrent and downloads, and to test software. I used the computer to test Firefox 3.0 Alpha 7, also known as Minefield. Because the computer wasn’t my main system with all my important stuff on it, I felt it was the perfect environment to take the plunge with playing around with Alpha software. More recently, I also tested Windows Live Messenger 9.0 Beta and had a play around with it. I now use both of these applications on my main computer because I have felt they are stable enough to use and they do run very well, but I wanted to check them out a little bit before taking the plunge with them on my main system.

It is really nice to be able to use these little gems hidden in your system. There are a lot of things included with Windows that I don’t use, or don’t even know about. Remote Desktop is one of those and it is a great application that is bundled with Windows. I wish I could use it more and for other things and connecting to other computer, but unfortunately I cannot. I wonder what I will discover next, hidden in my computer.

As you probably know, the next version of Microsoft’s instant messaging software, Windows Live Messenger 9.0, got leaked to the internet a week ago. Being the sly fox I am (actually, having basic knowledge of the internet,) I managed to get my grubby little paws on it to play with. I didn’t install it on my main computer, my laptop, but I did install it on the desktop with no hesitation.

My first impressions were that it seems exactly the same as Windows Live Messenger 8.5, except with a new feature that I couldn’t use yet. I decided to leave it, for now. With the release of Messenger Plus! Live 4.50, I decided to install it on my main computer. The only reason I didn’t do it sooner is because Messenger Plus! Live wasn’t compatible with this version, but the new version is.

Now that I had two computers with Windows Live Messenger 9.0, I could test out the biggest feature of 9.0, signing in from multiple locations. You may think its a useless feature, and yes, I can see where you are coming from, but for some people, I can see this as a useful feature. I could be logged into Messenger on my main desktop, them I could go and sign in on my Xbox 360 at the same time. Then I could leave it to run to the office and sign in to Messenger on my mobile. When I get to the office, I could sign into messenger from my work computer. I can be logged into all of these places simultaneously and get messages at all of these locations. I also have full control. I can sign off other places and any messages send, will show up on the other places.

I do have to say, this feature is very buggy and it was great to play around with, but when a few conversations were going, the thing didn’t send messages to both of the Messenger instances going. I don’t know if its a bug, a problem with the service being overloaded, or if its because I had Messenger Plus! Live that was conflicting with it somehow (but I doubt it.) It seemed like a great feature and I wish I had more devices that I could use it with. It would be great to play with.

That is really all there is to talk about the Windows Live Messenger 9.0 Beta. That is the only worthwhile feature to mention. I could quickly mention the dynamic display pictures, animated images as display pictures. This is very early beta so we will see if they add anymore features before the public beta. By them, issues with the multiple sign on should be fixed and working great. I can’t wait to see how this version shapes up.