In June, we announced that as part of Windows Live Essentials beta, we brought together two programs, Windows Live Sync and the Live Mesh beta, into one: Windows Live Sync beta. We focused on four things with our beta release:
* Making it easy to access the PCs you use from anywhere
* Getting your files and folders on the PCs you use regularly
* Giving you enough space to sync your most important files and folders to the cloud
* Providing simple document collaboration over the web using SkyDrive
Since the release of the Windows Live Sync beta in June, over 240,000 people have tried Windows Live Sync on hundreds of thousands of devices, and have provided a lot of feedback. The average customer syncs over 675 files with an average file size of 1.8 MB, and uses 240 MB of cloud storage. We received an incredible amount of forum posts and comments as well as informal communication through our feedback site. We have been listening and have made updates based on your feedback.
Renaming Windows Live Sync to Windows Live Mesh
In our beta release, we brought the best of Windows Live Sync and Live Mesh together. With the addition of remote access and cloud storage, we understand that the new program does more than sync files. So following the beta period, we’ll be using the name Windows Live Mesh going forward, which we feel best reflects our broader goal of allowing you to access your stuff across your devices.
Giving you more information
A number of our customers noted the inability to sync hidden files, so we added this support. Another point of feedback was that customers wanted a list of which files were missing in a synced folder. Now when Windows Live Mesh detects missing files, you can easily see the file name and when and where it was last modified.
More cloud storage
We continue to see that the primary way customers are syncing files is between their different PCs (or Macs). And we will continue to make it easy to sync virtually unlimited amounts of data between your PCs. When syncing files to the cloud, beta participants get 2 GB of synced cloud storage. Only 2% of these participants are using more than 1.5 GB. However, Live Mesh offers 5 GB, and while only a small number of Live Mesh customers use all their space, we want to ease migration and increase the online storage limit from 2 GB to 5 GB.
A number of customers have asked why we don’t allow you to sync up to 25 GB, given that 25 GB is the SkyDrive limit. While we merged Sync and Live Mesh in this release, we did not merge the online storage system used for Live Mesh with the one used for Office or Photos on SkyDrive. This means that each system has different storage limits and is optimized for different scenarios.
SkyDrive offers enough storage for you to share documents and photos with friends, family, and co-workers. Hotmail offers enough storage for you to store your email, calendar, and contacts. Windows Live Mesh lets you sync all your files and folders across your PCs and devices, and provides enough cloud storage for your most important files. Over time, we’ll be considering ways to do even more to share information across these systems.
Performance and quality improvements
We’ve made several performance updates to Windows Live Mesh in response to your requests that will provide noticeable improvements to your experience. We worked on cutting the application load time in half and made syncing large numbers of folders and adding multiple devices to a sync folder faster. We’ve optimized both memory and CPU usage during sync activity as well as decreased CPU consumption by as much as 30% when Windows Live Mesh is idle.
We hope you enjoy these changes and take the time to install the new Windows Live Mesh along with the rest of Windows Live Essentials 2011 once it is released from the beta. In the meantime, please keep using the beta programs and keep the comments coming. Thank you for using Windows Live!