Blog of a Long Distance Worker Tech

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Tag Archives: Live Mesh

Backups on a different level

Ultralight LatopLarger LaptopWith the cost of computer hardware today and the availability of file and folder sync solutions, it makes great sense to always have a second backup laptop available to you at all times such you can alternate or switch between them based on the emergency (machine is dead) to the having a larger presentation laptop and a smaller travel laptop. The sync solutions that work well for me are Microsoft Live Mesh and the Insync solution with Google Docs. Both of these solutions allow you to setup sub folders of your Documents folder as a complete file store that is synchronised to the other machine(s). In the past I have used the sync solutions to provide full files/folder backup and recovery for moving to a new laptop, but with the large amount of data I now sync that has sometimes taken me up to a week to get back and in operation. I see it now as a much better solution to always have two machines on the go simultaneously.

Live Mesh is more flexible in allowing you to have multiple folders all over your machine that you set to sync across all machines, but it does not offer much cloud storage (5GB but you can peer to peer sync without going to this storage) and there are mild rumours that with the coming Windows 8 that it will be ceased. This has proven very reliable for my situation where I have been syncing 80-120GB across three machines but I am not sure I will be sticking with it.

Insync is a much more interesting tool that allows you to use the universal storage nature of Google Docs to sync all your machines to Google Docs, and due to the low cost of Google’s storage ( free for 1GB, $5 for 20GB, $20 for 80GB, $4,096 for 16TB! per annum) you have ultimately unlimited storage. This service also allows you to share individual files and folders using the sharing functionality of Google Docs, and your remote and mobile access is via standard Google Docs on whatever device. I can see me transitioning to Insync only in the coming months.

Email is just a matter of using a webmail solution or one that offers full sync or IMAP to a PC client such as hosted Exchange solutions (Office365) or ,my favourite at the moment, Google Mail for Apps. Both of those solutions offer a complete storage solution for all your email, contacts and calendaring needs. Google offers more capabilities in being able to share calendars with people outside of your organisation and having access to some very interesting Google Apps platforms solutions such as CRM. Microsoft is definitely more behind in that side of things, and way more costly.

On top of that, using Google Chrome with full browser sync also makes sure that every bookmark and extension is synchronised to every machine I use. The final piece of the puzzle is the use of Lastpass to ensure that I have secure access to every password that I need.

So you have no excuse but to have access to a laptop with all of your data, all of the time, and even have access to your data in the cloud.

Most Useless 25GB Online Storage Gets Useful

Cloud is the key word on the Internet these days. Everyone gets excited about Google, Amazon and Apple for what they give you for quite small amounts of money. However there is something smaller – free. Who gives Cloud for free? Well Microsoft does, as they offer 25GB of storage with SkyDrive. So why are we not raving about it? Well because it is stuck behind the most appalling UI you have ever seen and only has limited integration with Live Mesh to allow only up to 5GB to be used by that service, leavin 20GB completely unused.

However news come about an update…

Microsoft tells me that the June 2011 update for SkyDrive will go live on Monday, June 20, so it should be available by the time you read this or soon will be. Reviewers were not given early access to the service, so I was only able to watch a live remote demo at the time of this writing. But as one of the few people who actually uses SkyDrive pretty extensively, Im excited by what Ive seen and by whats been implied for future improvements. SkyDrive has always been more promise than reality, but this update is going to go a long ways towards fixing that. I cant wait to see whats next.

via SkyDrive June 2011 Update.

This update seems to be giving us a way better UI, that looks like it will make it useful to actually sign up for the service. So remember one thing… you can use any email address as a Passport (such an old word) for accessing SkyDrive. Whatever you do, I do not recommend that Cross scripting hack hell that is Hotmail particularly as a logon for SkyDrive.

Can’t wait to try the new SkyDrive Out.

Meshing around

I have blogged before about using the Microsoft Mesh software for keeping multiple computers in sync so that I can pick up any of my machines and pick up exactly where I left off with all of my most important (actually all of them) files with me regardless of which machine I have in front of me. I also use it to ensure that if I do lose any of these machines then I am safe in my knowledge that I have access to all (almost to be pedantic) of my files still.

mesh Well this week I moved one of my netbooks over to Windows 7 which because it had XP meant that it was a clean install. Of course, as part of the installation I set up Microsoft Mesh and selected the normal folders to pull down onto the machine. Well three days later, the sync had not finished and was looking like it was stalled. A quick check through the logs showed an error WinError 18, with the associated text missing file. Checking around I found that the Live Desktop was at 5GB used (which it was not before) and this immediately sprang an idea in my head. Mesh is pretty dumb at times.

It has always been the case that you could setup sync and exceed your online storage and just ignore it. In fact, Paul Thurrott blogged about it in the early days but what was missed was the effect of exceeding your storage, something that I only saw when I also checked my Broadband data usage through my ISP’s nice dashboard. When the online storage is full, Mesh continues to attempt to sync and in this approach it uses bandwidth over and over again so it creates network traffic needlessly. This is a bit poor, particularly when this also seems to hit the processor usage of the machines involved.

Removing the online data store usage of Live stopped the whole repeated sync and suddenly everything is happy again. The world is good, and I am no longer frustrated with the never ending sync.

So come on Microsoft, fix Mesh and give it better behaviour when online storage is exceeded. Additionally, why do you keep it at 5GB? What is wrong with integrating this with the 25GB Live Skydrive?

On the road failure

generic_road_crash Well it had to happen, I am on the road and my netbook suffered a hardware failure. This was a non-fatal failure but a failure all the same – the WiFi went on the fritz and would not connect to any WiFi network. Now in the office this was not a major problem as I have wired Ethernet there but the company I work with has a second office which only have WiFi which pretty much meant that I could not work there nor could I do anything when I was back in the hotel.

So the decision was taken to replace the machine with something that could work particularly since I was four nights/five days from base. So given machine obtained (an Asus EeePC 1008HA), the recovery mechanism started.

What can I say about the experience? It took way longer than I hoped… in fact to basic usage of the machine it took the whole evening (expected) and to fully complete four days. Why did it take so long? Well the big time killer was synchronisation of files using Live Mesh – it just took a long time because I have a lot of data to put on the machine. Even then, this was sped up by the use of the non-dead machine I was replacing being local to the laptop for much of the recovery time, so this is not an issue of upstream performance on the small business ADSL. The one main thing though about the recovery mechanism was that it did work and got me working on the road. How about your on the road recovery mechanism? You really do need one for when you are on the road.

Note: My recovery steps

1. Base install of OS and configuration for basic networking including Anti-Virus (including machine hardening steps that I always follow)

2. Install key applications – Live tools, Live Mesh, Evernote, VPN client, Firefox, Firefox addins such as delicious and Xmarks to ensure I have my bookmarks and saved passwords, RocketDock, Skype, Skype handset drivers, Spambayes, WinSCP, Adobe Air, Tweetdeck (using group sync so I have all my groups) and Syncback.

3. Install MS Office 2007 and Project 2007 using online downloads of Trial software (hey I do not carry the disks, no need to when you can get the Trial versions that work up to 60 days).

4. Configure Outlook 2007 for my multiple Exchange hosted mail and IMAP4 accounts.

5. Install key driver software for 3G card etc.

6. Setup Live tools such as Live Messenger and Live Sync as necessary (I use Live Sync for My Pictures rather than Live Mesh just because it is setup in a better way for those file types).

7. Sync core file folders that are in Live Mesh

8. Sync secondary file folders in Live Mesh

9. Install iTunes and move my iPhone over and setting up Podcasts that I listen to on it (Music waited until it had completed synchronisation as I use Live Mesh that my MP3s are on all my machines).

10. Install Truecrypt for whole disk encryption, although activating this is outside of the four days :-)

11. When back at base, reinstall MS Office 2007 and Project 2007 using my actual media and proper activation keys (needed because the trial versions do not activate with my keys probably because my keys come from a volume licensing deal).

Laptop or Smartphone

This one is the biggie – as a mobile worker, a long distance remote worker, what is the main technology you need to do your job? Do you believe you need your hulking 15″ or 17″ Laptop that weighs 3kgs (6.5lbs)? Is that really a portable solution? Or are you the newly born iPhone convert who only needs that few small inches of screen and 6 hours of battery life? Which is it? Nick Wingfield at the Wall Street Journal has just written an interesting set of thoughts that at the headline level, imply that we all should be the iPhone convert by now.

However I believe that the choices as to which technology is best, is down to exactly what you have to do and where you have to do it. In fact for the generalist like myself, I see a continuum of devices as being needed for the mobile worker with a very important cornerstone at the centre – decent and effective data synchronisation. This is not fully the cloud world view – oh no, I see the need for the cloud to be part of a complete solution that ends up with data spread from device to device, over the cloud and in the cloud – pretty much of a whole atmosphere approach.

Right now I have been experimenting with Microsoft Live Mesh as that cornerstone, combined with hosted Microsoft Exchange, Activesync, Evernote, Box.net, Logmein and JungleDisk. Some of these are more mature than others (Exchange and Activesync – although I have to be very Microsoft based from a device perspective), some are more small business than enterprise (Logmein/JungleDisk), and some are really flaky – Live Mesh. Right now (let us leave Mesh out of it for now), I have a very effective ecosystem for tech use combining two Netbooks, four other laptops, two mobile smartphones and three separate working locations – to the extent that I can (and have) suffer individual device failures and gone straight back to work – an important characteristic for an independent consultant like myself.

Now back to Live Mesh, this has showed promise and sort of does work but suffers from a failure to sync certain folders for no apparent reason, something I have shared with Paul Thurrott of winsupersite.com. I have stuck with it though, and not returned to Microsoft’s Foldershare or gone to competitors as yet although that is getting close.

So what sort of user do you believe you are? Smartphone or Laptop or somewhere in between, or somewhere else?