It’s been in May this year that i first wrote about Microsoft Live Mesh, later in July I was able to get it installed and since then i have been using it on a regular basis.

Not that there is anything new in remote controlling a PC and sharing documents, but it is the simplicity how it is done and how it can be used.

Once you have added your clients to live mesh, you can remotely access them from anywhere where you have Internet access and the necessary permissions to install an ActiveX control. Note that you can also access your mesh clients from a PC that is not part of your mesh network, you just need to logon on mesh.com

All clients that are part of your mesh network have the Live Mesh Agent installed, this then adds an additional tray icon to your windows taskbar which allow you to directly access any live mesh devices, folders and the desktop.

Performance is quite ok and allows reasonable remote working, but i recommend to configure the Windows Vista Desktop to Vista Basic or Windows Basic, this will prevent the annoying screen painting effect.

Another great feature is the Live Mesh Desktop. Here you can create folders that if needed can be replicated across all your clients that are part of your mesh network. I personally use this feature often to simply move a file from one client to another, or I drop a document in there I want to continue reading on my home PC. 

At present a limited tech preview is also available for Mac clients and the CTP for Mobile devices has just been expanded as well. In general I am rather sceptic about the whole Cloud hype, but Live Mesh is definitely a cool innovation that we will most likely will hear and see more about in the near future.

Microsoft has opened live mesh to more testers, although only to users located in the U.S.

Well, after changing the regional settings, you get to the next page, where you can sign-up

And after a few seconds…….

When i wrote about Live Mesh back in May, I asked myself what corporate security administrators would thnik about having their users starting meshing their private and business systenms.

In Microsofts KB951861 you find more information on how IT Administrators can block Live Mesh on their networks.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951861/en-us

Already heard of Microsoft’s new service called Live Mesh ? If not, have a look here:
http://www.on10.net/blogs/nic/Hands-on-with-Live-Mesh/

You can sign-up for Live Mesh here: https://www.mesh.com/Welcome/Welcome.aspx, but there appears to be a long waiting list, i registered a couple of weeks ago, but still get the following message…..

I am really looking forward for this service, as, if it does what they promise, it will definitely make life a bit easier for those that work on different machines. I’m just curious about what corporate IT security people think of this service. I’m sure not all companies look forward to see their business PCs being “mes(sh)ed up.