Auri's Blog

Attention Live Sync Team: You touted all the great reasons I should move from Live Mesh. So I did. But what gives with all the great Mesh features seemingly being dumped?

Case in point, I can’t sync the same folders as before because now they’re “too big!” Why would you replace a service that let users store more information to the Cloud with one that stores less to the Cloud, and then leave that fact out in the upgrade process?

Lesson in Software Development: If you’re going to promote an upgrade, don’t make it a downgrade.

A few other issues to consider (and I don’t gripe all the time – but this is feedback you need):

1. I’m sure as I use Live Sync more I will get used to it. The problem is, I want to be excited about using it. I want to promote it to my friends. At this stage I can’t do that. Immensely useful features and a fantastic UX are now gone.
2. We can no longer tell which folders are synced unless we bring up the Live Sync interface. The blue highlight Mesh added made a lot of sense – you knew that was the synced folder. In User Experience design, this is called a “hot color.” Now I don’t know which folders are synced. I’m sure the software works fine, but what feedback did you get when running this by your users. My guess is little to none.
3. Live Mesh let you see a feed of what was added/updated simply by visiting the system tray icon. Why is this feature gone? I can no longer see what people have updated in my shared folders. I guess I could call, message, email them, but … why get rid of that feature?
4. If this is beta, why isn’t there a clear way to leave feedback on the product?
5. Why can’t I sync Firefox bookmarks? I know, IE is your product, and you can’t support Mozilla and other third party apps. But is there an API for plug-ins? I didn’t see an obvious way, but if you send me a link to an API, I’ll write a sync plug-in for a few other services.
6. I had seemingly no file count limit with Live Mesh between machines. However, there is one with Live Sync. Why? Can’t you talk to the Mesh team and kill that hurdle? I understand a limit on the Cloud storage, but why would you limit my own machines??? Why would you even care?
7. Kudos on finally adding smart LAN synchronization – but with the file size limit, how do I know all my files will be updated? Won’t that leave me vulnerable to synchronization issues? Have you noticed how many computers have 500GB+ storage these days? That’s not all music and video… even with non-power-users.

What gives?

I’m happy to help test and provide more feedback – just ping me on Messenger

Thanks!

-Auri