Live Mesh – more than online backup

I have been looking for an online backup service for my laptop. I use my laptop all the time and I often work remotely. For convenience I keep a lot of files and documents locally on my laptop. I know, I know….. I can fire up the VPN and access the documents on the network folder where they will be backed up anyway with the rest of our systems, but the convenience factor rules.

I already had a Windows Live account so it seemed natural for me to look at Live Mesh (http://www.mesh.com/). It’s free for up to 5gb of storage. The install was a bit confusing. It took a few minutes and at one point there was no visible activity going on, other than disk activity. The install window closed without giving a status and it reverted back to the original screen. I tried to install again and it told me the install was in progress. After waiting it out for a couple more minutes a window popped up and said it was done. It didn’t appear to be working right so I deleted and re-installed. The second time was just as confusing with the long delay but it seemed to work fine, eventually. Since then I have been very happy with Mesh.

Mesh is being positioned for online document storage, synchronization and sharing. However, it’s a GREAT backup tool. You simply right click on a folder and select “Add folder to your Live Mesh”. It takes a while to do the first sync but after that it will sync documents to your Live Mesh when you make a change on the PC. You can also access the files from any PC by logging onto your Mesh account over the web. The files are displayed similar to in an Explore window on the PC. Changes you make on the web are synced back to your workstation, but making the changes is a bit klutzy; open the file locally, make changes, “save as”, and then upload it back to Mesh. Otherwise, your changes are just saved in an updated version of your document in the temp internet folders on the PC.

Mesh will also give you remote access to your PC but I did not look at that option.

Mesh Likes:
- Free
- Easy to use
- More than just a backup tool – online access to your files
- Remote access to your PC

Mesh dislikes:
- Confusing install
- Limited storage space with no option to pay for more
- Don’t know what future pricing might be