Good points. The idea I was trying to get across is that — again, judging from the materials that Microsoft sent me — what’s been unveiled is just a really good sync product, but there’s potential for a lot more. In other words, Live Mesh is pretty promising, but as of this preview it’s still just promise.

I have to admit, though, that I’m not sure why the idea of licensing application to your mesh is all that exciting either. It’s a cool feature (and I do mention it very, very briefly in the article_), I’m not sure why that’s any more useful than the SaaS version of Office that Microsoft is experimenting with. Maybe I’m just being dense; after all, I haven’t had any coffee yet this morning …

While the general concept is “sync”, Mesh is a lot more than just that. Microsoft hinted to that in a blog post (http://blogs.msdn.com/livemesh/archive/2008/04/21/live-mesh-as-a-platform.aspx) with the following:

At the core of Mesh is concept of a customer’s mesh, or collection of devices, applications and data that an individual owns or regularly uses. The Mesh Account Service persists the relationship among these resources and authorizes access to them. **The mesh is the foundation for a model where customers will ultimately license applications to their mesh, as opposed to an instantiation of Windows, Mac or a mobile account or a web site.** Such applications will be seamlessly installed and run from their mesh and application settings persisted across their mesh.

That is a *HUGE* thing for Microsoft. What if Office was licensed to your Mesh instead of your PC?

Go read that post some more. I think you’ll find there is a LOT more to it than just a FolderShare clone.