[larrinski]

I bought an ibook a couple of months ago, and my copy of .mac just arrived today. I am running tiger 10.4.4 on both my imac g5 and ibook g4... There are the details... I was wondering if I can run one user on both computers using .mac to sync. Will .mac do this? I have tried the trial .mac and it seems to do an ok job of syncing my ical but I show multiple calendar names. If I name the user account the same, will it show 2 of them or one. ie- on one computer the user is fireman, and I set up the same user name on the other computer, will I have 2 ical calendars name fireman? I haven't tried it for mail, address book, and safari yet. I don't need itunes to be the same as I enable sharing and can see the other computer. the same goes for iphoto. Will I run into permission problems? Does it really matter if the user on each computer is an administrator? Do the users need to have the same shortname and home folder etc... And, if I delete an email on one computer, will it be gone off the other one once it syncs again? There are probably a hundred other questions, but that is good for now...

[Macpilot]

Determine which computer has the latest data. Determine what data you want to sync. Synchronize that computer with .mac (in the .mac sys prefs).

Then go to the other computer and sync it, but when it asks you how you want to sync, select "replace data on the mac with data from the .mac server". Not sure if that is exactly what is says, but you get the point.

Now, determine if you want these machine to automatically or manually sync.

My experience has been very good with the multi-computer syncing. I sync everything but the keychain.

And the .mac system has nothing to do with each Mac's user account info. It only cares that you have entered your .mac user name and password into the .mac prefs.

Right now I am typing this on one of my Macs (my second one, not my main desktop). This mac has all my Address Book data (excepy Smart Groups...no biggee), my Bookmarks, my iCal data, and my Mail.

On the iCal issue with duplicate calendars. What I would do is to reset Sync data in Sys Prefs - .mac - Advanced. Do this before anything, and do it from the Mac with all your latest info.

It is all pretty amazing when it works.

Good luck!

[frdmfghtr]

I don't use .mac so I can't comment on whether it can synchronize files in the following fashiopn or not, somebody else will have to confirm/deny the capability.

Anyway, in my further-in-the-past-every-day Windows days, I had a WinXP Pro machine set up as a file/print server with file and print sharing turned on. My other machine was a WinXP Pro laptop with document and photo folders mapped as drives on the file server set for offline access. When I would connect to the home network, the mapped drives would automatically connect and synchronize the changes made on each machine with the other while offline. It was niiiiiice!

To do the same on my Mac network (iBook G4 and mac Mini) I invested in Synchronize X Pro, which I have configured to do the same thing.

This may have been a bit wordy, but that sounds like what you are trying to do and how I did it. There may also be a BSD-style way of doing it (rsync?) but I'm not that good and Synchronize X Pro works quite nicely.