Remote Control Computing - Live Mesh

Want to access your work computer from home? Your home computer from work? Your desktop pc from your laptop? ... No problem.

Microsoft released this year a new software called Live Mesh. Similar to Remote Desktop, Live Mesh allows one computer to control another remotely. The advantage that Live Mesh has over Remote Desktop is that it doesn't require a terminal server, a static IP, a VPN, or anything: any 2 internet-connected PCs will do (Coming soon to Macs too - source). You can even link up mobile devices at m.mesh.com (and yes, it does work with my Blackberry).


Using your Microsoft Live Account (like your hotmail login for example), you can connect up to 100 different devices to make it easy to control any one device from any other. You also get 5GB of free storage on your "Live Desktop", which is basically your web desktop. You can then access that Live Desktop from any web browser, even if the computer you're using doesn't have Live Mesh installed (I tried both IE7 and Firefox 3). Imagine how handy that could be when you arrive at your meeting to find that you forgot to bring your presentation disk ... oh, wait, I uploaded a copy to my Live Desktop ... we're fine.


I'm still trying to figure out the syncronization options, it seems like there's a lot of potential here to do automatic backups of important files. Of course, if you're going to upload any sensitive data, make sure that you encrypt it first (Truecrypt or Blowfish). Also, you can now use Live Mesh to transfer files directly from one device to another, skipping your Live Desktop if you want. I could see this coming in handy if you're trying to transfer more than 5GB of data.

I've been using Live Mesh for a few weeks primarily to control my media-center pc via my laptop and it's worked pretty well. It doesn't do all that well with playing video, but it does great moving files, launching programs, and even playing music.

If you use multiple pcs, and want to access one from another, why not give Live Mesh a try?

Please share your experiences in the comments.

Now you know,
Garrett Woodroof