Live Mesh fans, the day many of you feared has come: Microsoft is acknowledging its plans to"retire" its Live Mesh PC-sync service on February 13, 2013.
"(W)e're starting to communicate with the remaining Mesh users and provide a set of instructions on how to keep their files in sync and alternative options for some of the features they're still using," said the Redmondians in a December 13 post on the "Inside SkyDrive" blog.
Microsoft introduced Live Mesh back in 2008 with much fanfare. The original plans for Live Mesh were quite ambitious; it was supposedly going to be a lot more than just a sync service in its full implementation.
But there have been growing hints for some time that Microsoft planned to replace Live Mesh with SkyDrive.
Microsoft officials said in today's blog post that "at one point," Live Mesh was used by "a few million people," but claimed "most" have already moved to SkyDrive, its cloud storage service. Currently, according to the Softies, there are fewer than 25,000 active users of Live Mesh. Microsoft officials said more than 200 million people "have used" SkyDrive.
Back in November, Microsoft announced the addition to SkyDrive of selective sync -- a feature many Live Mesh users wanted to come to SkyDrive. But it wasn't full selective sync, as becomes evident when reading tweets, comments and email from users who were quick to check out the new feature
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With the already-delivered selective sync in SkyDrive, users can select what they sync and can share files and folders directly from the Windows File Explorer. Users can select which folders from SkyDrive are synced, so that it's not an all or nothing proposition. New users can set this up when they first install SkyDrive on PCs or Macs. Those with SkyDrive will receive automatic updates and notifications of the new functionality.
Microsoft announced this week that it is bringing SkyDrive to the Xbox.
This item first appeared on ZDNet's All About Microsoft blog under the headline "Microsoft to retire Live Mesh PC-sync service in February 2013."
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