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mpancha · Apr 3, 2006, 08:21 PM

I just signed up for the 60 day trial for .Mac, and had a few questions (I'm sure I'll have more questions the more I play with .mac, but for now..)

- Currently, I'm only getting approx 130 KB/s transfer when I upload to iDisk, is that normal, or do those of you with memberships get faster speeds?

- From what I gather, with Backup I can actually backup my documents and music and so on to iDisk. What is my limit, and again, are the speeds that slow? If they are, then there's one less reason for me to use .mac.

I had more, but I can't think of them, so I guess this is it for now.

jwoods · Apr 3, 2006, 09:00 PM

I just subscribed after the 60 day trial.......

I think that is more dependant on your connection and whatever speed your ISP provides, but I haven't paid attention when transferring stuff.

Backup will let you back up anything you want to.....AND....You don't have to back up to your iDisk. You can use CD's, DVD's etc. Trial limits you to 100mb. There is no limit (that I know of) for members (other than your iDisk limit, if that's what you are using). Backup will span disks, so if you are backing up to media, you can keep popping them in until it'd done.

mpancha · Apr 5, 2006, 02:45 PM

jwoods >> thanks! I tried iSync on several connections varying from my home connection/work, and even connected to a T3 line..... end result, I never got over the 150 KB/s mark, but on average I was hitting 30 (thirty) KB/s. That just isn't good enough...

The latest issue I'm having, I can't access my iDisk via Finder, in System Preferences I'm logged into .Mac, and I can see how much space I'm using on iDisk in the preference pane, but I can't get to it in Finder.

Randman · Apr 6, 2006, 04:47 AM

Transmit is a godsend when it comes to uploading stuff to your .mac account.

mpancha · Apr 7, 2006, 11:20 PM

yet another annoyance with .mac....

I did a format to fix a bunch of problems that 10.4.6 caused for me... and I figured may as well see how good all that sync'ing Apple offers works via .mac. So I did the format, upgraded to 10.4.6, did all the software updates, and finally logged into .mac and turned on sync'ing. I started a sync at 10:30pm, at 11:15 it was done. The problem with this picture, all I had backed up was my Address Book, Calendar, and Mail accounts/rules. Why did that take 45 minutes, on a Friday evening????

Luckily I also backed up everything to an external hard drive. What took me 5 seconds to copy from external drive and about another minute to import into address book/calendar, took 45 minutes via .Mac.

Old Toad · Apr 8, 2006, 12:20 AM

Evidently the traffic to the iDisk servers is so high that the upload time is terrible. I did have an occasion to go one about 2am PST via a cable connection and it was pretty fast. But the next morning it was back to a snails pace. Just too much traffic!

Eug Wanker · Apr 8, 2006, 12:51 AM

.Mac non-iDisk syncing currently is not working properly for a LOT of people, myself included. If you're thinking of paying for the subscription, I would say don't until they get this worked out.

ie. At the moment, .Mac sucks royally.

k2director · Apr 8, 2006, 02:23 AM

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

.ie. At the moment, .Mac sucks royally.

Agreed. It's totally out of commission right now, but has been sporadic in its reliability for the last few weeks. Sloppy.

mpancha · 01:37 PM

that's the same conclusion I'm coming to. WHich is sad, some of the "features" I could really use, and having them automated through .mac and isync would be great. So far this is definately not worth me giving apple $140 (canadian dollars). but they still have 52 days to redeem themselves via my trial subscription.

ANother peeve, one of the things .mac was supposed to sync was my mail accounts and filters. After my sync (after I formatted), big surprise, there are no mail accounts or mail filters in Mail.

jwoods · Apr 9, 2006, 03:36 PM

Hmmm. I just sync'd, and it took maybe two minutes. I must be hitting it when it's working, but I keep odd hours due to my job. Perhaps traffic has been lighter when I've sync'd.

.mac is not for everyone, but for what it is, I like it and use it. It's not without it's faults though.

mpancha, It took 57 days of the trail before I decided to take the plunge, so play around with it and see if you like it enough to pay for it. I didn't think I would like it, but now that I have it and use it, I do. I don't think it's worth the money, so if you decide to keep it, order it from amazon. They usually have it for $79.99.

mpancha · Apr 10, 2006, 10:10 AM

thanks for the tip jwoods! I am pretty sure I will buy it at the end of my trial, not b/c I like what I've seen so far, but only because I use iBank for tracking of my finances, and it backs up to iDisk. And I'm sure over time more applications will switch.

I hope things get better with the sync speeds, I'm sure its just a hiccup, but according to www.mac.com the servers are running smoothly whenever I have problems with iSync. oh well, still got 50+ days to go