first of all what is the meaning of the ttl

i do get these two reply on the same network. the 192..... is from my desktop to another pc via wan and the 10 is in the wan can u explian why the ttl is different?

192.168.0.3 64 byte ping: ttl=127 time=5 m
10.1.80.8 64 byte ping: ttl=64 time=9 ms

linux and windows have different ttl starting values. basically TTL is Time To Live, how many hops until the packet dies.

so which is good. a high ttl or a low ttl?