We’ve been hearing rumblings about a Live Sync name change, and sure enough, today on the Inside Windows Live blog Microsoft is announcing that Live Sync will be renamed as…Windows Live Mesh.
Geez we’re not going to even bother taking shots at this one, far too easy. Besides, we’ve always kind of liked “Live Mesh”, it’s got a kind of a Ray Ozzie ring to it.
In the blog post, Allison O’Mahony explains the thinking behind the name change:
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.
Luckily for us there’s a bit more news than just name changing navel gazing: the new Windows Live Mesh will increase online storage from 2gb to (what the original Live Mesh had) 5gb. Just checked and the online storage here is still at 2gb:
You still won’t be able to use the full 25gb of SkyDrive storage for syncing, nor connect up Live Sync to your Hotmail or Office Web Apps or Photos, apparently:
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.
..and there’s no word in the blog post on any new beta drop for the new Windows Live Mesh. Allison does hint at it coming in a full product launch:
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.
We’ve been hearing that a full launch of Windows Live Essentials 2011 is coming sooner rather than later, and announcing the Live Mesh name change and coming features seems to hint that we should be seeing it soon.
There’s more about performance improvements, syncing hidden files, and detecting missing synced files in folders. Check out the blog post for more.