[icibaqu]

Hi. I'm a June 6th away from buying a new mac (and first since the IIe when i was a kid), and was wondering what were the real benefits of .mac, in any.

is it the webmailability? (i'm guessing you can have .mac accounts be the only ones you check in mail)

is it the calender synching? (also - my gf has an ibook - so would she need to get a .mac account if we wanted to synch our calenders? - it'd be nice to be able to do that).

storage doesn't seem all that significant in amount, although the ease of backingup seems cool.

so yeah, i was just curious if someone coudl tick through the benefits of .mac.

[Gankdawg]

The biggest benefits for me:

1. Syncing address book, bookmarks, calendars, keychains, etc. Huge benefit.

2. Easy to create picture websites for my family to enjoy.

3. Storage space to backup important files using Backup.

[TETENAL]

You can get a 60 days trial for .Mac. Get it and see for yourself whether it's worth for you. Different people have different needs, so they value different things of .Mac most (or don't need it at all):
I don't think you can sync calendars of two different people.

[icibaqu]

the problem with any X day free trial is that the length of the trial is calculated so that if you really test the product, you've got too much invested in it to not keep it going. think: 2 months of emails and having to send all your contacts an email saying "I've changed my email address yet again!!!"

my post is an attempt to pre-empt the free trial and avoid the route of pussyfutting into .mail, etc.

[Randman]

For everyone who says get it, you'll get others saying don't. Lots of threads on the subject.

For me, it's worth the cost.

Simple web hosting uses, I have a site up for work-related stuff, my blog and photo albums, videos for family and friends to view as I live pretty far from my family.

Syncing. Having my mail, my address book info and my Safari bookmarks available on any computer, even a pc is very nice. I also like having my two Macs synced.

myname@mac.com is also a nice touch.

And finally, you do get perks, such as software and other goodies from time to time.

Give it a try and see how it works for you is always the best way to go though.

[King Bob On The Cob]

It makes your computer 1,000,000,000,000x faster. :-P You'll finally be able to play Doom 3!