[souljer]

Hello all,

Just wondering how many of us are going to or have already paid $100. for a .mac email account and all the extra "useful" features. Last year when it started, there was pleanty of upset people who were not happy with paying for what they were getting for free. Last year we got in with a "discount" this year it's full price. And $100. is a lot by any measure.

My account expires next week and I'm not really convinced I should pay $100. for email and a few webpages that I could and do get for free from my ISP. I've already got email forwarding from my website domain host, and that's the address on my business cards, so I'm not too worried about losing the .mac address. What are your thoughts? Is it really worth it?

[VEGAN]

Originally posted by souljer:
Hello all,

Just wondering how many of us are going to or have already paid $100. for a .mac email account and all the extra "useful" features. Last year when it started, there was pleanty of upset people who were not happy with paying for what they were getting for free. Last year we got in with a "discount" this year it's full price. And $100. is a lot by any measure.

My account expires next week and I'm not really convinced I should pay $100. for email and a few webpages that I could and do get for free from my ISP. I've already got email forwarding from my website domain host, and that's the address on my business cards, so I'm not too worried about losing the .mac address. What are your thoughts? Is it really worth it?

NO.

Oh, but I dropped .mac as soon as they started charging...

[pjmurphy]

Originally posted by souljer:
Hello all,

Just wondering how many of us are going to or have already paid $100. for a .mac email account and all the extra "useful" features. Last year when it started, there was pleanty of upset people who were not happy with paying for what they were getting for free. Last year we got in with a "discount" this year it's full price. And $100. is a lot by any measure.

My account expires next week and I'm not really convinced I should pay $100. for email and a few webpages that I could and do get for free from my ISP. I've already got email forwarding from my website domain host, and that's the address on my business cards, so I'm not too worried about losing the .mac address. What are your thoughts? Is it really worth it?

I recently renewed my .mac subscription.. why?

1) Backup - I know I can backup to iPod and discs but I like knowing there is a 100MB backup somewhere not in my house or bag.

2) Homepage - It fits my needs perfectly. Great linkage to iPhoto

3) Freebies here and there. Some good stuff..

4) Online integration

I know I can go though TW Road Runner and do some of these but I like the seamless integration and I like supporting Apple.

[LaGow]

Apple renewed .Mac for me using my credit card number from, I believe, iTunes Music Store. It's possible they kept that number from last year when I signed up for .Mac, but they certainly did go ahead and renew the account without my active consent. Very annoying.

On the other hand I was going to renew anyway since I actually have a lot invested in that litte "@.mac" email address and just don't want to give it up. The freebeies are fun, but inconsequential to me. The $100 is a tax write-of for me, but I can see how it could sting a little for the folks still in college or not quite as far along in their careers.

[fat mac moron]

I constantly use .mac, so not renewing wasn't really an option. Besides being my main email address, I backup my address book, stickies database, important documents and more to it. I like also how I can be at work, go to .mac and pop-up my Safari bookmarks I have on my computer at home.

[quadgrande]

My wife and I both have an address at .Mac, so the cost to renew is $110. I decided not to, as I run my own domains for http, smtp, etc.

I only use the email, and it's just not worth it to me. I'm a developer, and constantly refresh my machine, but it's much faster to use my iPod or a CD to backup/restore than over the Internet. 100MB is just not enough. If I have to use some other backup mechanism, why use 2, you know?

I email pics to my family rather than sending them to a website.

Here's some ideas about what could make .Mac worth it to me...

1) 5 email accounts, not just 1
2) Hardware gift, like a mouse.
3) Savings on software I actually use from Adobe, Macromedia, etc.

[MindFad]

The e-mail address is too important now, and the iDisk is really handy. So yeah.

[OldManMac]

I just renewed. I like the e-mail address, as I've changed service providers, and I'm going to change again next year.

There's a lot of neat stuff in .Mac; to me it's worth it.

[Maflynn]

I just renewed,
I use my .mac email address, idisk, homepage pretty heavily so changing them to a lower cost alternative would have been a hassle.

As they say time is money and the time needed to spam everybody with my new email address, setup an idisk alternative and a homepage provider would have been too painful.

Mike

[-Q-]

I just renewed. I mainly us the e-mail and the .Mac syncing, with an occasional pic/web page thrown up when I'm feeling lazy.

The software freebies are nice, but after the ease with which I can transfer address book info, bookmarks, etc. it's definitely worth $100 to me.

[LeeG]

There's been a ton of threads on this already, but my reasons:

1) iPhoto-->web page in a few clicks, so easy
2) iSync - keeps my bookmarks, addresses, and calendar across 3 macs - irreplaceable
3) Backup - not the best backup, but makes me feel good to know there's a copy online - I am not good at backing up otherwise.
4) iDisk - esp with panther coming, i find it useful as online storage
5) .mac email - i have, its fine, another bonus

all this for about $8-9 a month is very worth it to me, and as the integration increases with future OS revisions, I think (hope) I'll enjoy it even more-

Lee

[nobitacu]

I am, because .mac is my main personal e-mail account, so I don't want to give it up and have to change everything of my new e-mail address... that takes hours to do. So yea, I am going to pay that $100. I just hope that Apple can give us more options for that... Backup is also another one of my main reason too. The cost of .mac for me is more than the OS itself, so... I don't think it's worth that amount, but... I don't have much choice.

Ming

[Mr. Blur]

yadmrt (yet another dot mac renewal thread)

yes, i renewed. isync, idisk, etc etc....it's definitely worth it to me. and, to apple canada's credit (we always seem to bitch about apple's pricing....) when i renewed just before leaving for holiday (it was due to expire while i was gone...) the price was $159cdn....but in the interim they dropped it to $139 to reflect the current rise in cdn$ value - they charged me the $139 no question asked.

LaGow - they would not have used your credit card from itms - you probably have your .mac pref set to auto-renew (this was the default) and they used the info from when you signed up.

[Xeo]

This is not an OS X topic. There have been plenty of threads about this in the past. Because this seems to be an active discussion, I don't feel right closing it so I'll move it to the lounge (even though I'm sure some "Loungers" will get upset about it).

[typoon]

Yep I renewed my .mac, I use it too much not to.

[mrfrost]

Yes I renewed, yada yada...blahblah.....

[OwlBoy]

Me too, hosts my site, and my email. And lets me work on stuff @ school and at home with the iDisk.

-Owl

[Clurin]

I renewed the account. After having the free account for about 3 months (I bought my first Mac, an iBook, last July) I thought the features were worth the initial discounted price. If I had the free version for longer, I may have felt differently.

I had no problem renewing the account this year, even tho I really only use it for e-mail. My reason being that this is the first time I've had an account for longer than 6 months and not started getting at least 1-2 spam messages a day. As a side note, my school email account gets around 100 spam messages a day, so this is a huge benefit to me, even though Mail does a great job filtering.

Anyway, those are my reasons, and as said above, $8-9 a month isn't bad.

[mike one]

NO
not worth it.
and my .mac address has been getting about 10 spams a day for 6 months, no stopping in sight.
$100 is a rip off. now if they wanted to segement the package, so you could spend $20 for email here, $50 for web space, $x etc for whatever then it would make sense. but none of the features seem that useful to me, and too much of it is pseudo spyware for my liking.

yeah nice about that auto re-subscribe thing. i saw that check box checked in my account about a month ago, when i checked to see when my .mac expired. saw that cheked and said "one more reason those shifty bastards don't deserve any MORE money from me."

the $100 will be better spent on X.3

[zigzag]

If I were short on funds, I would consider it overpriced. I mean, you can get a lot more for your money elsewhere if you just want an e-mail address and a web page.

But if you can afford it I think it's worth it. I have 4 Macs and I really appreciate iSync and iDisk. I've also used my homepage and file-sharing on occasion - it's very convenient for those of us who don't want to set things up ourselves. I haven't really used the other perks but they're there.

Of course, it helped that (a) I renewed through megamacs.com for only $80 (plus $5 shipping); and (b) I got a $20 coupon from Apple, effectively reducing my renewal cost to $65.

To answer your question, I would say definitely maybe.

[cpatubo]

It's all dependent on how much you use it, and my usage is close to nil.

This is only because I have multiple domains of my own, with email, web storage, etc. I haven't made much usage of my iDisk, I've iSynced maybe half a dozen times, and I've never used the backup.

Oh, and not to mention, the massive amounts of spam I received on my @mac.com address.

If you use all those features, more power to ya, but it just isn't justified for me.

The new iDisk functionality in Panther does have me curious, though.

[Hawkeye_a]

Yes. i need the email address, backup and iDisk.

[souljer]

Hello all again,

Thank you so much for your input and justifications as to why you did or didn't renew. It's given me some other perspectives to think about.

To all who have seen this subject elsewhere, I appologize for bringing it up again. I did look for other threads about this before I posted but didn't find any. Sorry I missed them. As someone said, time is money and I didn't have the time to go through all the archives to dig up what I didn't even know was there for sure. To the Moderator; Hey I'm just trying to get some info and more experienced perspectives so I can make an educated guess here. I thought that's what these forums are for. It's not OS 9 and it's not Hardware. OS X and .mac seemed like a reasonable pairing to me. If this is super annoying to you all, I'm sorry for messing up everyones week.

Back to the subject; I've mostly used it for email, but I've been thinking of using the Backup feature (I never do, and I know I should). Since I only have my little Pismo there is nothing to iSync with, so that's out. This definitly doesn't sound like a $100. value.

Now I see a lot of you use iDisk. What is that exactly and what do you use it for, may I ask? Is that just storage? What and why would you choose to store on-line as opposed to on your own computer or extra hard-drive?

One more thing: With Panther coming out soon, does anyone anticipate some special or new .mac feature that will be better because of .mac and Panther working together?

All thoughts are appreciated. As I'm sure you can tell I'm not very good at this newfangled computer and internet thing so I'm open to new ideas and/or guidience. Again, I really appreciate your time and comments especially when you take the time to list reasons pro or con.

[zigzag]

I've used iDisk for 2 things. First, you can store images on it and link to them from MacNN or elsewhere (a signature image, for example). Second, I've used it to transfer video files to and from another .Mac member who I'm working on a project with.

I don't know the details, but with Panther I guess the iDisc will be synched so that you always have a copy on your desktop, or something like that. This won't do much for me but a lot of people seem to like the idea.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier is that Apple places a ton of royalty-free music on the iDisk in the Software>Extras folder. I've used some of it in video projects and that alone has justified the subscription for me. I'm surprised they don't promote this more - I don't even see it mentioned on the site.

I think the homepage/iPhoto features are great but I haven't used them as much as I planned on, just due to procrastination.

[IUJHJSDHE]

I wouldn't pay anything higher then 20$ for it.

[- - e r i k - -]

Start using iSync, then we'll talk.