[PB00k]

I am new to Macs and was wondering what are the benefits of getting .Mac and if it is worth it for a college student to get. Also, once to get it and get an email address do you have to pay the $100 a year to keep the .Mac account.
Well any help explaining .Mac would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

[ManOfSteal]

It is an annual fee, so yes...each year you will be required to pay whatever the current .Mac fee is at the time.

I'm a .Mac user, and absolutely love it. Other services are available at other places for much cheaper; however, none are as integrated into OS X as much as .Mac is.

Simply get a trial account and give the feature set a try. You can read all about the the benefits from the .Mac site itself. After the trial, decide on your own what you would like to do.

[PB00k]

Thanks, I'll probably get a trial account then and try it out.

[amazing]

as far as an email account that you plan on keeping for awhile, you'd be better off with a yahoo or gmail account. yahoo has a long and trusted history with very good spam controls, gmail has the advantage of allowing pop mail access without an annual fee.

personally, as long as you backup to CD or DVD regularly, i'd rather spend the money on other stuff like a firewire external 16X DVD burner, or a large ultralight firewire HD (I'd assemble the drives myself since that's a whole bunch cheaper.)