[Burke]

You have to have a Mac to sign up, but since mine's not here yet, I';m curious if there's a way to check beforehand.

[electric monk]

No, you have to have a Mac to get the trial account, anybody can pay for .Mac

Speaking of trial accounts, that's how you find out if they have the username for you: you sign for the trial account and if they have your username you upgrade it later.

[Burke]

Originally posted by electric monk:
No, you have to have a Mac to get the trial account, anybody can pay for .Mac

Speaking of trial accounts, that's how you find out if they have the username for you: you sign for the trial account and if they have your username you upgrade it later.

Ah, thanks the info.

[Krusty]

You could always tell somebody you know that has a Mac (such as people on these boards) what user name you are looking for. From the "Go" menu on the Mac, we can attempt to connect to that username's iDisk Public folder. If the the name doesn't exist, then you'll get a "cannot find URL" message. If it does exist, their iDisk will either mount or give a password prompt. You can also try simply browsing to h ttp://homepage.mac.com/username/ and see if anything exists at that site.

If there is an Apple Store near you, you can try the iDisk thing from one of their machines or just use a buddies Mac if you know somebody who owns one. Note, these methods are not completely fail-safe as a network problem could also give you a false negative (so you should try it a couple of times at different times if possible). But basically .. look for net evidence of the existence of their username. People that pay for .Mac are probably using something (homepage, iDisk) that you can navigate to.

Otherwise, just do what the monk says and try with a trial account once you have your machine.

[Gavin]

How about if you sign up for an ichat account?

Are ichat names the same as idisk?

[ManOfSteal]

Originally posted by Gavin:
How about if you sign up for an ichat account?

Are ichat names the same as idisk?

To sign up for an iChat account you need a .Mac name, to get a .Mac name you need to set-up a .Mac Trial account.

[Burke]

Originally posted by Krusty:
You can also try simply browsing to h ttp://homepage.mac.com/username/ and see if anything exists at that site.

I did that, both of mine preferred names are taken already. Thanks for the tip, though.

[msuper69]

Originally posted by ManOfSteal:
To sign up for an iChat account you need a .Mac name, to get a .Mac name you need to set-up a .Mac Trial account.

You can just get a free AIM screen name for iChat. You don't need .mac to use iChat.

[Big Mac]

Originally posted by msuper69:
You can just get a free AIM screen name for iChat. You don't need .mac to use iChat.

ManOfSteal meant "iChat account" as a synonym for .Mac account. It is, however, important to point out to newcomers that iChat is compatible with existing or new AIM accounts.