Moving from Live Mesh to SkyDrive

I've been using Microsoft' Live Mesh cloud-based file synchronization system for many years, and have been very happy with it. I recently got an email from the service admins saying that Live Mesh is about to stop around mid-January, so I decided to migrate to SkyDrive before the deadline is here.

Since I often utilize Live Mesh to sync my files while on the run, I most often use the service with a 3G wireless connection, which works well for my needs. One of the key things for me is synchronization speed, but also robustness in the case of medium-quality links like 3G often is.

I'm happy to say that moving my about 1.2 GB worth of Live Mesh data to SkyDrive was smooth: a simple file copy from the Live Mesh folder to the SkyDrive folder, and then waiting for all the devices to sync fully (note to self: preferably use WiFi for this instead of 3G).

Overall, the SkyDrive client seems to be an improvement over the Live Mesh client in Windows 7, but not by any significant margin. The thing that is good or no-so-good (depending on your viewpoint) is that the SkyDrive folder link now appears on every Windows/File Explorer window. But, I quickly created a shortcut on the desktop for the SkyDrive folder and changed the icon to be the fully blue cloud, so that works well for me.

I find SkyDrive to be somewhat more obtrusive than Live Mesh, for example by creating the above folder link automatically (which, of course, can be removed) and creating a folder at my C:\ root (as in C:\SkyDriveTemp). But these are small things.

I still have to check if I can have a local copy of my files on Windows 8's built-in SkyDrive client. It seems a pity to me that the files appear to be fetched from the Internet, when I would definitely need offline support – another key point for me.

What's your Live Mesh/SkyDrive experience? Let me know!