Microsoft is Earning Some Street Credit with Cloud Computing Initiative

I never really had a strong opinion one way or the other on Microsoft. There are others that have really strong opinions. MS is often the butt of a joke and often the scapegoat of many digs. Apple has been making fun of them via commercials for the last few months/years. Microsoft has recently countered with their own campaign and, as expected, received even more criticism. I have to admit, I thought the commercials weren't that bad. Even the Seinfeld/Gates version. Maybe its me, but I thought they made their point.

Recently, I installed Vista on my 32bit laptop and more recently, on my 64bit desktop. As expected, I struggled to get started as Vista seems to have more rules and gotchas than XP etc. But once you get the hang of it, I really like the interface and the workflow. So, more and more, I am digging Microsoft.

This week is the big Professional Developers Conference where MS rolls out all of their new plans for the future. Click on the logo to see streaming and recorded video sessions. Man, all kinds of really cool things are coming. As expected (by me at least), MS is thinking in the clouds. They are rolling out a variety of really cool cloud computing offerings. My favorite one right now is Microsoft Live Mesh. Think of it as an online synchronization, storage service.


So, I created a Live Mesh account online. I then "added" my devices (laptop and desktop, both with Vista) to my account. Apparently, windows mobile and Mac devices are coming soon. Mesh provides 5GB of storage space online. Surprise, surprise it didn't seem to like Firefox. I can create folders in my Mesh account and choose to have them sync with each or all of my devices. In other words, I can work on a file of any kind on my laptop, save it to the designated "sync" folder and as long as I am signed into Mesh, it will automatically sync it to the folder online, as well as my other devices selected. If I am not connected, it will synch the next time I'm online. Mesh also provides Remote Desktop capabilities. So, I can use it as a conduit to access files between computers and other devices. Performance for Remote Desktop is fairly slow at this point. But Mesh is in its early phases and I expect performance to improve with time.

For a guy that works on a variety of projects both in the home office, while at our corporate office or simply while traveling, Mesh is an awesome tool to enable working in a Virtual environment out here in the clouds.