Microsoft offers some decent free services through its Windows Live stuff. And some crap. Among the crap is Windows Live Mail, truly an abomination. Among the decent services, Skydrive’s 25GB of free storage, accessible from anywhere you can fire up any web browser, in any OS I’ve tried, is pretty handy.
In the middle, stuck on “pretty good idea, lousy implementation” is Windows Live Mesh (in beta), a service that allows you to share devices’ resources on the web. Nice, but implementation sucks. Only 5GB direct storage, but that’s OK. “Likes” only Internet Exploder. Must use Active X controls. Nu-uh. Not going there. Bad juju. Requires adding the Windows Live Mesh application to enable access. Access from a ‘nix box? Notsomuch.
Opera Unite allows sharing files, media, etc., via a simple browser interface. Much easier, simple access and access control. All inside the browser. Opera, that is. Since I already use Opera for almost all my browsing anyway, that’s just fine by me.
Uninstalling the Mesh app. I have no use for it, since it really only “likes” Internet Exploder and requires using Active X, and I’m just not going to do that. Nice try, M$, but that one is definitely in need of some serious changes.