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Live Mesh: Open, But Still Barely Live. Who Has Time For This?

A few months ago I detailed the obstacle course Microsoft put me on, trying to get to Windows Live Mesh, and somewhat sarcastically labeled it Windows Barely Live Mesh.  Fast forward 3 months, and today Mesh is open – but still Barely Live.

But first things first: I wanted to read on the specs before installing.  You can click on the maze of mostly useless help text, but can’t find out such basics as:

  • is sync strictly via the server or peer-to-peer, a’la FolderShare ( a product Microsoft absorbed)
  • are the files stored up @ the 5G free storage encrypted?
  • etc…

The last one (encryption) is pretty important and for many users / businesses a potential dealbreaker.  Since it’s no-where mentioned, I assume MS does not offer encryption.  In comparison, Syncplicity, a sync-backup-and-more  service launched by former Microsofties offers encryption, and just as importantly the explain what happens to your data before you take the plunge – see my review here.

Oh, well, so the only way to find out is jump in… so I decided to install and test.   No more hoops, simply sign in with my Live Id (formerly Passport) account, and voila! – here’s the download.

2 minutes later:

The “Get more help” takes me back to the already seen generic FAQ.

Normally this would be the time to search the MS knowledge base, or better yet, Google, but this thingie is so new, it’s probably not yet documented.   Who has time for this?  I’m out of here, be back to check on Live (?) Mesh in another few months.

And Dear Microsoft, this one was just a quickie, but you still owe me for last time, se here’s my virtual invoice:

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