[shmoolie]

I have a Macbook Pro that I use for my day to day work and a MacBook Air that I only use when I travel. I want to find an elegant way to synch my Apple Mail, Apple Address Book, and iCal data from the Pro to the Air and then back again. I'd also like it to be expandable for when I get an iPhone later this year.

Synching other types of data is not really important but if it can also be done seamlessly then I'm fine with that too.

Some info: Both laptops run Leopard and I'm using a POP3 email account from my cable company and I'd prefer to keep this account as my primary. I have a wireless home router.

I was thinking about signing up for a MobileMe account and using this. Would this be the best solution?

Thanks.

[TETENAL]

That's what MobileMe is for.

[mduell]

MobileMe will sync your email settings and the calendar/address book contents. Use IMAP for mail to have your mail contents synced everywhere.

[rickey939]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

That's what MobileMe is for.

[Mastrap]

MobileMe keeps my MBP at home, my MBP at work and my iPhone in perfect harmony. Well worth the money.
And as already mentioned, use IMAP for mail, not POP. If your provider doesn't offer IMAP open a gmail account, get that account to check your old POP account and then enable IMAP on the gmail account.

[shmoolie]

Originally Posted by Mastrap 

MobileMe keeps my MBP at home, my MBP at work and my iPhone in perfect harmony. Well worth the money.
And as already mentioned, use IMAP for mail, not POP. If your provider doesn't offer IMAP open a gmail account, get that account to check your old POP account and then enable IMAP on the gmail account.

Do I set up the main laptop with the Gmail IMAP enabled account in Apple Mail and then use Mobileme to push that out to the other devices?

[TETENAL]

MobileMe e-mail is an IMAP e-mail account, so it's automatically available on all devices. If you get MobileMe anyway, I don't see why you wouldn't also want to use the e-mail. It can also fetch mail from your old e-mail account via POP.

If your current e-mail provider already supports IMAP, then you can continue to use that. All e-mails are available on all your devices then already, even without MobileMe. You would just have to set up the accounts in the respective e-mail clients – something that MobileMe can do automatically. Only push e-mail wouldn't work on your iPhone like it does with MobileMe's e-mail.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by shmoolie 

Do I set up the main laptop with the Gmail IMAP enabled account in Apple Mail and then use Mobileme to push that out to the other devices?

Set up the Gmail IMAP account on any computer, and MobileMe will copy the settings (server/username/password) to all the other computers. Each computer will pull the mail from Gmail.

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

MobileMe e-mail is an IMAP e-mail account, so it's automatically available on all devices. If you get MobileMe anyway, I don't see why you wouldn't also want to use the e-mail. It can also fetch mail from your old e-mail account via POP.

Given Apple's horrible performance so far (1.5 nines uptime and data loss!), there's plenty of reason to use Gmail instead.

[TETENAL]

There's also plenty of reason not to use Gmail.

[Mastrap]

Originally Posted by shmoolie 

Do I set up the main laptop with the Gmail IMAP enabled account in Apple Mail and then use Mobileme to push that out to the other devices?

You can use MobileMe to just push POP mail to both your laptops. That however quickly becomes a royal pain in the proverbial, simply because changes made on one machine aren't reflected on the other. If I answer to a mail on my iPhone then that change shows on all of my three devices, instantly. POP mail can't do that.

And I prefer gmail to Apple's mail any day of the week. But YMMV.