Live Mesh Homepage

If your like me and you work on multiple computers then the idea of cloud computing makes a lot of sense. There are multiple solutions out there both free and commercial but one that caught my attention in Microsoft’s Live Mesh which is free to use and gives you 5GB of online storage. It requires you to install a small program on each of the computer you use and then you can create folders on your online desktop which will then be synced to the desktop of each computer you have mesh installed on. Any files you then place in these folders will get replicated to every other computer in your ‘Mesh’ as well as a copy stored on your online desktop so you can access your files from other computers that you have not installed the software on. You can even invite others to view or contribute to individual folders and you can choose which folders get shared between what devices and if a copy should be saved online. It is currently available on Windows operating systems and Mac OSX.

This works extremely well but I wanted to share my entire desktop between all my computers and not just certain folders on the desktop. This turned out to be rather easy to do at least on Vista, Windows 7 and Server 2008 which are my OS’s of choice.

To share your entire desktop you should first create one folder and only one on your live desktop webpage, this will become the root folder of your desktop. Call this folder something along the lines of ‘LiveDesktop’ . Once it appears on the desktops of your meshed computers move it to some other place on your hard disk, preferably in your home directory along side your Documents, Downloads and Desktop folders. There should also be a folder in your home directory called ‘Live Mesh Folders’. Enter into this folder and you should see your folder that you just moved from your desktop. Right click on it and choose ‘Change Sync Settings’ from the context menu. You need to point the location to the new location of your LiveDesktop folder. Once you have done this go back to your home directory. Right click on your Desktop folder and choose properties from the context menu. Once the properties dialog opens go-to the location tab and change the it to point to your LiveDesktop folder. It might ask you if you want to merge the folders. You can choose what-ever you want here. Repeat this process on all your computers. Your desktop should now be the same on all your meshed computers and any file you save there will get replicated throughout.

Popularity: 7% [?]