Some of us are confused about Microsoft’s variety of syncing solutions: Live Mesh, Windows Live, and My Phone. It looks like from now on, Microsoft will be focusing solely on the My Phone variety.

As a recap, My Phone is like free “lite” Exchange for the rest of us. If you use Exchange or have an Exchange hosted account, you know that your emails, contacts, calendar, and tasks, are all synchronized across all of your devices, and that if you add a new calendar appointment to Outlook on the desktop, within moments it is synced to your phone. Because of this, your PIM data is always backed up.

Exchange is great, but it’s not cheap and most people don’t bother with it unless they get it provided from work. My Phone will allow anyone to get an account with 200MB of free space. It provides automatic daily backup of calendar, contacts, photos, documents, SMS, and texts. You can also manage your info online, such as download pictures to your desktop, change a calendar appointment, or update a contact. Also, if you lose your phone, you can just plug in your credentials and have all your data be loaded onto the new device. So far, it looks like the interface is entirely web-based and you won’t be able to use Outlook with it.

We imagine that Dashwire may be sweating a little bit, since they offer similar functionality and My Phone will come on all Windows Mobile 6.5 devices, while Dashwire must be downloaded.

Right now, My Phone is in a closed beta. If you want to see some screenshots of My Phone in action, check here and here.