This fault was present in the beta of Live Mesh and was never rectified for reasons I can’t figure out as, frankly it’s a big one, especially if you’re using a computer with an SSD on which space comes at an expensive premium.  In the example here, taken from one of my own computers you can see that Live Mesh, after a complete sync has finished, is taking up a huge 12.2Gb of space.

It’s not difficult to rectify this problem though you’ll have to access a system folder in Windows.

1. First of all in Windows Explorer press the Organize button
2. Select Folder and Search Options from the menu that appears
3. In the dialog that appears click on the View tab
4. Change the Hidden Files and Folders option to Show Hidden Files, Folders and Drives
5. Make sure the Hide Protected Operating System Files (Recommended) box is unticked

Now Open your Windows drive on your computer and navigate to the following folder…

Users > YouUserName > AppData > Local > Microsoft > Windows Live Mesh

The temporary files (identifiable by the .tmp suffix) are stored by Live Mesh in the  Assembler folder and are usually found at the bottom of the file list.  If you select all these files, right click on them and select their Properties you may find that they are using up a considerable amount of space.  On my computer they were using up 10.8Gb on my 80Gb SSD and these files wre neither needed nor were they doing anything.

It is perfectly safe once your sync is complete to delete all of these files.  They won’t interfere with the operation of Live Mesh as they’re no longer required.  I went looking as the space was need to install a new game and clearly 11Gb of wasted space is something you want to reclaim.

If you have software such as the excellent CCleaner installed on your PC you may find that it cleans out these files, but again, depending on how your system is configured it may not.  Thus I find it’s always a good idea to manually drill down to the Live Mesh folder once in a while to see if there are any temporary files there taking up space.  You can even want to put a shortcut to this folder somewhere.

Once you have completed this task you’ll want to go back into the Folder and Search Options in Windows Explorer and re-hide system and other files.  This will prevent any more being accidentally deleted.

If you are having real trouble with Live Mesh, which can happen and can prevent the system syncing files at all, you can delete the entire contents of the Windows Live Mesh folder.  This will reset everything, though you won’t need to set the computer up on the Live Mesh system again, and assuming your syncing is up to date it doesn’t take very long to rebuild itself.  Just remember to check for those dreaded temporary files again afterwards.

NOTE: If you do delete the entire contents of this folder to reset Live Mesh and find that it then tells oyu it’s re-sending or receiving thousands or even tens of thousands of files, it’s actually not.  Don’t worry, it’ll only take about twenty minutes or so to sort itself out and report that it’s completely up to date.

The other requirements are a Windows Live ID and Microsoft Internet Explorer to access the contents on the Internet. Users who might find those restrictions to strict are better off with Dropbox who is less restrictive in this regard.

Live Mesh works by adding computer devices to the Mesh. The Mesh are all devices that synchronize data. It basically works by adding devices to the Mesh in first place, e.g. a local computer running Windows XP. That computer is then added to the Mesh that the user has access to. The process finishes with the installation of the Live Mesh software on the local computer.

Live Mesh will create a system folder on the computer system containing all folders that have been selected for synchronization by the user. That’s different from Dropbox which makes use of one static folder with the requirement that all synchronized folders are created in that folder. Some users have posted workarounds by using symbolic links but that’s pretty advanced and not recommended for beginners or inexperienced computer users.

Folders can be added by right-clicking them and selecting “Add folder to Live Mesh” from the context menu. It takes a few seconds before the newly selected folder appears in the global system folder. Synchronization with the Live Mesh online service usually starts immediately afterwards.

Live Mesh is currently providing 5 Gigabytes of storage space to its users, 3 Gigabytes more than what Dropbox is currently offering.

Another interesting option is the ability to invite members. Inviting members will give them access to selected folders – and their files. That’s interesting if documents need to be shared with several computer users regularly.

Live Mesh does have its shortcomings. The main being the concentration on the Windows platform and the Internet Explorer requirement for browsing the data online. While Internet Explorer will surely remain a requirement the prospect of being able to add mobile devices and Macs looks interesting. It remains to be seen though if mobile devices are limited to the Windows Mobile platform.

As of now Live Mesh provides a fast way of synchronizing data online for Windows users. It works intuitive, the performance is fine and the storage space is enough for a lots of data.

Well soon we’ll get a glimpse of the possibilities of Windows Live Mesh synchronisation platform, and it’s a hell of a lot more then simple data synchronisation across multiple devices.

Essentially Live Mesh is a platform from which applications can run from the desktop, from the web and from various different devices. Long Zheng posted some screenshots of a test application demonstrating this in action.

The potential for this is simply amazing and I’m really exited for when the Mesh platform is released fully and applications become available. Imagine this situation… you have a 15 gigabyte library of songs which you can now synchronise into the cloud and your Live Mesh Online desktop. Any changes you make to the music files can be synchronised between platforms. Imagine having a media application running from the Mesh platform. sing this you could be anywhere, decide you want to access your music library or songs and simply go onto your online desktop and play them as if you where on your computer at home.

If you ask me this kind of situation is a whole lot more appealing then this entirely cloud-based OS we keep hearing so much about.

I’m excited. What’s your opinion?

What I find most interesting is that both developments have a very similar aim or goal, but at the same time are very different. G.ho.st is not so ambitious as to try and become the next major web platform like Mesh, but it is trying to become the focal point of all our web interactions.

G.ho.st began as an online desktop with some uploading and synchronising capabilities while Live Mesh is a synchronisation service with some form of online desktop.

You can access the new release of G.ho.st at test.g.ho.st although be warned that it is currently even more alpha then the existing release. I actually didn’t notice any increases in instability but maybe that’s just me.

So far the changes I have noticed seem to be largely cosmetic. I requested the desktop context menu be simplified a few months ago and that seems to have happened, the start menu has also been streamlined slightly and I have noticed a few new icons scattered around the place. It could possibly be a little faster as well, but I really am not sure on that one.

I had a look around for some release notes, or a blog post from the G.ho.st developers but couldn’t seem to find one anywhere, so beyond what I’ve noticed so far I couldn’t tell you any additional changes although I’m sure there are many. I’ll keep fiddling around and see what I find.

Have any of you been using G.ho.st lately?