. mac account. Is it worth it?

gigapet

gigapet

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Just a quick question, is it actually worth getting a .mac account? I'm only considering it for the email as mail in OSX won't work with my old hotmail account. Also I have to run OS9 at work so will old mail progs like entourage be able to pick up my .mac stuff. It seems pretty expensive for an email account...:confused:
 
Well, i personally am not sure if it's worth it at this point. However, I believe it is a good product and Apple is adding value to it. I am currently sharing a .Mac account with my father.

He uses it for email and he got me an email for $10, even though I told him I didn't want it. And I use all the iDisk services. Everything from posting links to pictures for this site, ordering photos on iPhoto, and my favorite thing so far has been the isync integration allowing me to sync my address book for both my laptop, desktop, and a computer I use at my father's office.

I guess it just depends on how you plan to use it. If Apple continues to increase the value of a .Mac account I may have to get my own. (Especially once my father gets the hang of the other features :) )
 
i can't see it being worth the money for just an email addy. i mean there are lots of mac oriented addresses you can get for less. you can get a macosx.com or macsrule.com addy for real reasonable by clicking the email link at the top of this page. (or the one banner)

but if you are going to be taking advantage of the other stuff, then i think it's probably a fair deal. i was very close to getting mine back when my dsl provider essentially gave me the main things i wanted out of it plus a few more. so instead i upgraded to jaguar. if my digital camera took better pics, i still might think it was worth it with the free photo printing included. i have the free version of virex, so that didn't appeal to me. but if you don't have that, again it's value added.
 
I pay for .mac. The first reason was the address. I want to be able to change provider (i did it several times already, and my previous reference link was the forward from IEEE, but I stopped this (too expensive, even if I may reconsidere when the children leave home as I'll have more time to read and they have the very best engineering litterature). My children use free mail providers (caramail and hotmail) but for me and my wife I wanted something more reliable, and I appreciate the homepage and the download area, so I think it's worth the money.

BTW the homepage should now improve, it's a mix between freeform and template oriented, but when you start with freeform, the templates become very erratic. And iDisk access speed is still quite slow (even if it improved).
 
I signed up when they had the special promotion going. I find, and use the features regularly. The question is, do you plan on using the features? I use backup, iDisk, and of course the Mac email. The use of the virus program was worth the price alone when Apple said it was going to charge for it.
 
Chevy, the templates can be avoided. I don't use them. If I do a new page, I just do it with an editor - BBedit, Bluefish etc - and then drag it to my iDisk - Sites folder.

If you want the .mac *only as email*, your account can be added to someone else's account. So you will get in that case 5 MB of .mac.com email address for about 10 $ / year.

I have both - one added account to a friend's account .. of those 5 MB, but it has turned to my main account now. And the packet with the site etc. iDisk .. mh, I like it but it could be a lot faster.

For the next year I'm a bit undecided. Maybe i'll continue. I want to keep my mail... On the other hand, I am considering about getting a second domain ...
 
I find it to be very much worth it. For someone like me who doesn't want a website but wants to post up some photos and movies, who wants a good email address and some free apps I find it very much worth it.
 
I just signed up.

For me it is very much worth it with the iPhoto and iDisk integration.

Just out of curiosity, I called my ISP to see how much disk space cost (I have 5 MB as part of the standard package). They want $1/MB/month :eek:
 
Originally posted by Giaguara
Chevy, the templates can be avoided. I don't use them. If I do a new page, I just do it with an editor - BBedit, Bluefish etc - and then drag it to my iDisk - Sites folder.
Click to expand...
When I had my (free) iDisk, I used to set it up as a local folder in Dreamweaver Define Sites. No drag and drop there, just synchronize. Sort of like FTP.

I didn't think .Mac was worth it. I was one of the angry iTools members who felt it should have been free with a Mac, like advertised. Plus I sort of like controlling my own online destiny with my own registered domain name. :p
 
Originally posted by themacko
I like your site, Matt. I don't think I've seen one yet that's that simple yet informative. Nice!
Click to expand...
Wow, thanks! My family members are getting a kick out of it too... :) :)

I suppose I'll have to change the theme when Mario Sunshine gets a little dated... lol
 
I have a .mac account and I have mixed feelings about it. In theory I think it is worth it if you use all of the tools provided. I LOVE having a webpage (I don't know html or anything similar, so without .mac I wouldn't even know where to begin making a web page) and the iDisk storage is great too (albeit slooooow).

What I'm really angry about is the email address. The TWO times I have really needed to use it, the service has been down and I wasn't able to retrieve emails via the web. Completely unacceptable.

Hopefully all the kinks will get worked out and more features will be added. At this point, no matter how much I love having a website I don't think I can justify $100 for the renewal.
 
i haven't tried .mac but i have wanted to get it. The reason being i have tried yahoo geocities, angelfire, hotmail, dark horse mail, bolt mail, tripod, and att mail and they all have one problem. I can't do anything with them. There is no inspiration to create because they lack consistency and support for the mac. which kinda sucks. but i do like mail.app, excellent spam filter. I'd say try it out and if you don't like it you can always cancel.
 
You can cancel after the first year, but remember it's 100 dollars for this "test" run. That takes a good bit of commitment and if you aren't satisfied it's a bitter pill to swallow. I'm just glad I was able to get in at half the cost under the initial offering for existing iTools members.

I'm holding out hope that Apple will wow us with some new feature and give us something to really entice more renewals.
 
If you go to www.mac.com you can get a free trial... 60 days of dot mac for free. But if you don't have a use for idisk or homepage don't bother. The virus software is a joke :)
 
I also like it for the ease of having a simple web site where you can put photos and movies and stuff easily enough without needing to go and buy your own domain.
I also got mine when it was discounted. But if the reported plan from Apple to sell songs online has extra perks/benefits for .mac users (and I would think it would be poor market strategy if Apple didn't do that), then, imho, it would be worth the $$ to renew.
 
Originally posted by Giaguara
Chevy, the templates can be avoided. I don't use them. If I do a new page, I just do it with an editor - BBedit, Bluefish etc - and then drag it to my iDisk - Sites folder.

Click to expand...

Yes I did some like that, all my previous sites (I mean pages on sites) were done like that, but on the other side, i really appreciate to publish directly from iPhoto. And when you mix .mac Homepage software with home made pages... you're good for trouble !
 
Let's see, what was the original question: is it actually worth getting a .mac account?

• If you can't live w/o a mac.com or .mac email address, yes; if not, probably not.
• If you like getting 100 MB of ad-free, ad-support-free web space, plus the other features, yes; if you don't mind ads, even on a site like www.breezeland.com (which I use—www.jabber1.tk, folks! Check it out!), then no.
• If you want integration between everything, like your address books, different computers, etc., yes; if you can live with swapping files with Zip disks, backing up to CD's, etc., no.
• If you don't know HTML and you don't want to buy an extra WYSIWYG program to write it, then yes; if you do know HTML or you have a WYSIWYG HTML editor, then no.

Even if you want one or two of these features, .mac may not be right for you. Look on Apple's .mac website and decide if most or any of the features are what you want. Personally, I don't want/need most of the features (I use www.mail.com, www.breezeland.com, a Palm IIIxe, SimpleText for HTML, and I don't care about the rest), though a .mac email address would be nice, and I can't afford $100/year anyway.
 
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