[reybart]

Hi, I am an educator and planning to buy .mac. Is it worth the price if I am going to switch to this?
any advice and comment is appreciated. Thanks anyway. I just ordered through Amazon.

[MrCaN]

even if you already ordered it, I would be interested in some opinions of it.

[Will McGoonigle]

No. I expected more but it's slowed down a lot in terms of the promise it had.

[hldan]

Originally posted by reybart:
Hi, I am an educator and planning to buy .mac. Is it worth the price if I am going to switch to this?
any advice and comment is appreciated. Thanks anyway. I just ordered through Amazon.

Dot Mac's worth gets higher and higher. I started out with iTools (when it was free) and I didn't wanna pay one thin dime for .Mac when Apple decided to charge for it. Once I realized that I was using more of it than I thought I couldn't do without it.
My email for one thing.
My stored pictures number 2
Then Apple started adding more features that grew on me fast such as my address book. Anytime I erase and format my HD I don't have to worry about typing in all my hundreds of contacts.
The Safari bookmarks are protected and I like the fact that I have access to them on any computer Mac or Windows.

I have more than one Mac so using iSync with Dot Mac keeps both Macs with the same info.
The best part is having the iDisk on my desktop on each computer. Once I make a change or store something new on my iDisk the other computer automatically gets it so when I carry my Powerbook I still have everything I stored in Dot Mac from my desktop.

Dot Mac is expensive and I wish that Apple would give continued subscribers and better deal each year but it will grow on you so fast that you will be willing to pay for it. Especially if you are an educator it would be perfect for you.

[Randman]

If you take full advantage of it, it's worth the money. I don't need my own website, so it's a good place where I can have an online presence. I have part of for family photos, movies, GarageBand stuff, etc, and part of it for professional uses, my design portfolio, cv, etc.
It's my primary e-mail client and I've gotten 1 spam all year. The integration with iApps is great, iPhoto has improved with it, Backup is nice and so is Virex. The iDisk is handy and I've taken advantage of having a copy of my bookmarks accessible from any computer.
And while I wish there were a few more perks (the number of goodies seems to have decreased somewhat), the service is worth it, imho.

[ajbaker]

I purchased it when they first started charging very reluctantly with the intention of letting everyone know my email address was changing and then not re-purchase the next year.

I soon realised how much I used it. To have access to all my personal data (address book, mail and bookmarks) even when behind a restrictive firewall at work is great.

I would say go for it; its not the quickest, and there are ocassionally problems, but not getting spam is worth the money alone.

Let us know what you decide.

[JKT]

I'm in the yes camp too, but I do make full use of the features. Best thing to do is to try the 60 day trial before deciding to buy. FWIW, you get to keep the username and can continue to use it in iChat even if you don't pay for the account at the end of the trial.

Anyway, here's why I say "yes, it is worth having (for me)":

Homepage and the integration with iPhoto are just great for knocking out nice, clean websites for the family and friends to look at with zero need for any coding knowledge.

iSync is something that is another league of goodness. If you have a mobile phone that is supported (T68i in my case), and if you have more than one Mac, or if you use third party computers (at school/college/university for example) but still want access to your home computer's Address book and Safari bookmarks it is simply fantastic. I recently bought my new PowerBook and all I had to do to get my Address Book, iCals and browser bookmarks from the iMac onto the PowerBook was run iSync.

iCal publishing is something I use but haven't had a great need for, so I can't comment on its true usefulness - I feel that it is somewhat limited as other people can't add to your published iCals and therefore synch info back to you. Also, accessing your iCals online is not as easy as it should be - there really ought to be a Homepage section devoted to iCal so that you can set up and index of your calendars, password protect them etc, to provide an easy and secure portal to them.

Backup is a bit "meh", but it's OK for simple backups of the more important things like your address book, etc

iChat... you don't strictly need a .Mac subscription to use it, but it is a nice bonus when you do.

mac.com email - I have my work e-mail account, but I use th e.Mac one too - it gets very little spam, it's nice to have.

The cons of the service are:

1. Price - if you don't make full use of it, then is it worth the cost? Hard to say unless you try it out.

2. There are some annoying limitations to the various things on offer - I would prefer some more "power" options for homepage such as a greater degree of control of the designs (even something as simple as being able to add your own backgrounds to the templates), the length of the page and image titles you can add etc, and I'd also like some less US-centric offerings (e.g. the Resume section would actually be useful to me if it had a Curriculum Vitae section - the British equivalent which requires a different style of template - again, this would easily be solved if we could have a bit more control over the templates).

3. The 100MB size of the iDisk. It gets too small with prolonged usage - I've had to delete some Homepages from my iDisk because I was beginning to use up too much space when I would prefer to have left them online. Like another poster said, Apple really ought to "reward" you for maintaining your subscription. Ideally, what they should do is give you e.g. 50-100MB extra (or more as time goes by) per year of subscription. That seems a reasonable offer to me.

4. The "freebies" that you get are sometimes very nice to have but sometimes don't apply to you (because they are only available to US citizens -which is really annoying) or because they just aren't something you are interested in. I think more people would appreciate the extra iDisk space per year or increasing e-Mail space etc than they would the free games etc.

[Randman]

Although the latest tweak has improved the homepage bit. You can now add your own html-coded pages under advanced.

[ajbaker]

double post

[The Placid Casual]

Worth it? Not a chance.

Just buy your own domain and some hosting.

You will get more storage and features for less money.

I subscribed for 2 years but no more, oh no, no more.

[JKT]

Originally posted by Randman:
Although the latest tweak has improved the homepage bit. You can now add your own html-coded pages under advanced.

I realise that, but I don't want to have to hand code anything - I just want to be able to "move" bits about and add e.g. bigger text fields - some very basic WYSIWYG editing of what is already there.

[Orion27]

I have a .mac account for the email account and iDisk. Though uploads are slow, it is somtime handy to put files from work on the iDisk to be retrieved later at home, such a updated data bases ect. If you make use of the Homepage Feature, it's worth it.

[sillydog701]

Originally posted by The Placid Casual:
Worth it? Not a chance.

Just buy your own domain and some hosting.

You will get more storage and features for less money.

I agree.

However, if you have more than one computers, and from all of those computers you have hi speed internet connection, .Mac is very good for sync, that's all.
Everything else, you can have your own domain name, although not as convenient as the integration with Mac software.

If you only have one computer, I don't see the point to get @mac.com email address for that much money.

[phobos]

quote:
------
Originally posted by The Placid Casual:
Worth it? Not a chance.

Just buy your own domain and some hosting.

You will get more storage and features for less money.
------

I totally DISAGREE with you placid casual. If you buy a domain name and a hosting service you'll pay more than what .mac is asking.
Hosting services are really expensive. If you want a trustworthy one that gives a lot of traffic to start with that is. You usually pay 50$ per month for 9 or so pages in serious providers. And no one has a 9 page site. But just to make things simple let's say you have a 9 page site. You pay for a year 600$. Add to that the actual domain name that costs about 30-50$ ( sorry I can't remember right now) and you have approximately 630$. For a domain name and .mac you pay 120$ per year. So you actually save 510$. If that's not saving than I don't know what is.
This is what I do. I have a domain name and I use .mac for the server. And it works quite flawlessly. It seems that .mac traffic limits are quite high so you won't face any real problems with your site shutting down etc. I don't have the most frequently visited website but I usually get 300 hits per month and that equals aproximately 900MB to 1GB traffic. So far I haven't faced any problems.

So please people don't write about things you don't know.

[Cliff_O]

Originally posted by phobos:
quote:
------
Originally posted by The Placid Casual:
Worth it? Not a chance.

Just buy your own domain and some hosting.

You will get more storage and features for less money.
------

I totally DISAGREE with you placid casual. If you buy a domain name and a hosting service you'll pay more than what .mac is asking.
Hosting services are really expensive. If you want a trustworthy one that gives a lot of traffic to start with that is. You usually pay 50$ per month for 9 or so pages in serious providers. And no one has a 9 page site. But just to make things simple let's say you have a 9 page site. You pay for a year 600$. Add to that the actual domain name that costs about 30-50$ ( sorry I can't remember right now) and you have approximately 630$. For a domain name and .mac you pay 120$ per year. So you actually save 510$. If that's not saving than I don't know what is.
This is what I do. I have a domain name and I use .mac for the server. And it works quite flawlessly. It seems that .mac traffic limits are quite high so you won't face any real problems with your site shutting down etc. I don't have the most frequently visited website but I usually get 300 hits per month and that equals aproximately 900MB to 1GB traffic. So far I haven't faced any problems.

So please people don't write about things you don't know.

Nonsense. I pay $120/year to Dreamhost to have my domain hosted on their Linux servers. My plan comes with 500MB of disk space (combined mail/ftp/web) and 25GB of monthly bandwidth. .Mac can't touch that. I have a network and network attached storage for backups and syncing, so .mac offers me no value whatsoever.

[diskgolfking]

Originally posted by Cliff_O:
Nonsense. I pay $120/year to Dreamhost to have my domain hosted on their Linux servers. My plan comes with 500MB of disk space (combined mail/ftp/web) and 25GB of monthly bandwidth. .Mac can't touch that. I have a network and network attached storage for backups and syncing, so .mac offers me no value whatsoever.

I am interested in hearing more about this. Can you explain to me how to use iSync to synchronize my calendars and contacts using this kind of storage?

Thanks

[JKT]

Originally posted by sillydog701:
I agree.

However, if you have more than one computers, and from all of those computers you have hi speed internet connection, .Mac is very good for sync, that's all.
Everything else, you can have your own domain name, although not as convenient as the integration with Mac software.

If you only have one computer, I don't see the point to get @mac.com email address for that much money.

I guess you folks just don't get it? The point of .Mac that makes it so useful IS the integration and ease of use. Yes, we all know that you can get far more disk space etc from elsewhere, but the downfall there is that you don't get anything like the ease-of-use. If you are technically competent to use a different host, generate your own nice, easy-to-use looking websites, etc, then obviously .Mac really doesn't make a great deal of sense for you, but if you aren't competent enough, then it is a no brainer, especially IF you use it to its full potential.

[Maflynn]

I think its worth it.

You definitely can find a cheaper solution.

Here's some difference between dot mac and an alternative solution.
The alternative solution doesn't doesn't provide the integration with the OS.
some (most?) don't provide the free tools to administer the web pages
Most don't provide free software
No one other then apple provides the free address and safari integration/backup.

Changing your email is so disruptive, so adding on the nice features as list above and the mess of changing your email really makes it worth while.

The bottom line its your money and only you can make that determination.

Mike

[spreadlight]

.Mac is great. My family is oversees. Getting picts to them is a piece of cake using Homepage. Coupled with iSight, communicating is a lot easier and funner (audio + visual) than the phone.

In short, whether .Mac is worth it totally depends on YOUR needs

[The Placid Casual]

Originally posted by phobos:
quote:
------
Originally posted by The Placid Casual:
Worth it? Not a chance.

Just buy your own domain and some hosting.

You will get more storage and features for less money.
------

I totally DISAGREE with you placid casual. If you buy a domain name and a hosting service you'll pay more than what .mac is asking.
Hosting services are really expensive. If you want a trustworthy one that gives a lot of traffic to start with that is. You usually pay 50$ per month for 9 or so pages in serious providers. And no one has a 9 page site. But just to make things simple let's say you have a 9 page site. You pay for a year 600$. Add to that the actual domain name that costs about 30-50$ ( sorry I can't remember right now) and you have approximately 630$. For a domain name and .mac you pay 120$ per year. So you actually save 510$. If that's not saving than I don't know what is.
This is what I do. I have a domain name and I use .mac for the server. And it works quite flawlessly. It seems that .mac traffic limits are quite high so you won't face any real problems with your site shutting down etc. I don't have the most frequently visited website but I usually get 300 hits per month and that equals aproximately 900MB to 1GB traffic. So far I haven't faced any problems.

Umm. You're quoting utter rubbish. Don't waste my time and yours on this.

.Mac is NOT really worth the money.

I pay:

Domain name for 2 years, .co.uk = �3. (www.123reg.co.uk)

Hosting with unlimited POP3, 5 Gig monthly transfer and 500MB = I pay �5 per month. (www.hostchart.com has this for $5)

Total (For me) =�58

.Mac = �69

As for photo albums and stuff, I use freeware apps. Yes you don't get the full seamless integration, but if you know what you are doing, do you really need it?

So please people don't write about things you don't know.

Please, don't lower yourself to crass insinuations. You know nothing of what I do, who I am or my technical abilities.

[Randman]

Actually both of you are coming across as bratty children.
.Mac is a good value for some, while others can live without it.

[strokemouth]

It's definitely got to be the seamlessness/ease of use that is the main attraction with .Mac. I own my own webhosting business and our cheapest plan is $6.49 a month (9.99 domain name, but you can bring your own if you find it somewhere else cheaper) for 10 GB transfer, 500 MB disk space, 20 email accounts (POP or IMAP), subdomains, ftp accounts, etc. So thats just under $80 per year (just under 90 if you buy a domain name too) for more features, etc.

However, my girlfriend still uses .Mac for putting her pictures online, she uses her .Mac email, syncs her bookmarks, etc. I could just give her whatever she wants on my server, but she would rather have the ease of use and the awesome integration of .Mac. If you are looking solely on capacities, .Mac is not worth it. If you want to have that "all-in-one" experience that couldn't be easier to do, then go with .Mac. I guess it all depends on how much work you want to do.

[The Placid Casual]

Originally posted by strokemouth:
It's definitely got to be the seamlessness/ease of use that is the main attraction with .Mac. I own my own webhosting business and our cheapest plan is $6.49 a month (9.99 domain name, but you can bring your own if you find it somewhere else cheaper) for 10 GB transfer, 500 MB disk space, 20 email accounts (POP or IMAP), subdomains, ftp accounts, etc. So thats just under $80 per year (just under 90 if you buy a domain name too) for more features, etc.

However, my girlfriend still uses .Mac for putting her pictures online, she uses her .Mac email, syncs her bookmarks, etc. I could just give her whatever she wants on my server, but she would rather have the ease of use and the awesome integration of .Mac. If you are looking solely on capacities, .Mac is not worth it. If you want to have that "all-in-one" experience that couldn't be easier to do, then go with .Mac. I guess it all depends on how much work you want to do.

At last, the voice of reason.

[euchomai]

iSync is the reason for .mac. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have it. I hope they upgrade it soon, add some new features and somehow make my iDisk FASTER. It is stupidly slow.

[mrgaskell]

As an educator, I use my .Mac account for posting lecture notes, word docs, excel spreadsheets, and even to host my school's computer lab check out time using iCal. I used a Dreamweaver template to do my initial site and just haven't found a good enough reason to code for a new one now that I have an idea of what the hell I'm doing.

I also used it to put up pics of my daughter when she was born. She was way premature and I didn't have time to make pages via Dreamweaver so I used th .Mac homepages. You can see the results here: Elly's page

Here is my classroom webpage:class site.

Hope that helps!

[reybart]

Originally posted by mrgaskell:
As an educator, I use my .Mac account for posting lecture notes, word docs, excel spreadsheets, and even to host my school's computer lab check out time using iCal. I used a Dreamweaver template to do my initial site and just haven't found a good enough reason to code for a new one now that I have an idea of what the hell I'm doing.

I also used it to put up pics of my daughter when she was born. She was way premature and I didn't have time to make pages via Dreamweaver so I used th .Mac homepages. You can see the results here: Elly's page

Here is my classroom webpage:class site.

Hope that helps!

That is interesting. Now I can make my own class website! Thanks for sharing.

[romeosc]

You get FREE picture posting @ spymac.com and Google is offering 1 GB free in new hosting!


So if all you use it for is posting pictures.......

[the_glassman]

.mac offers seem-less integration, but is over priced for the space provided.
With companies like google and spymac offering 1 GB of e-mail for free! While with .mac it's what 15 mb and you have to buy each additional account?
Sure the intergration with the applciations is nice, but not worth the extra cost to me. If they increased the space to something like 1 GB for mail and another for storage, I would be the first one to sign up. If they upgrade.

[spatterson]

Originally posted by Cliff_O:
Nonsense. I pay $120/year to Dreamhost to have my domain hosted on their Linux servers. My plan comes with 500MB of disk space (combined mail/ftp/web) and 25GB of monthly bandwidth. .Mac can't touch that. I have a network and network attached storage for backups and syncing, so .mac offers me no value whatsoever.

I'm with canaca.com and I only pay 120 bucks a year for 80gb of bandwidth a month and 10gb of web space.... best deal out there...

[Cadaver]

Originally posted by the_glassman:
.mac offers seem-less integration, but is over priced for the space provided.
With companies like google and spymac offering 1 GB of e-mail for free! While with .mac it's what 15 mb and you have to buy each additional account?
Sure the intergration with the applciations is nice, but not worth the extra cost to me. If they increased the space to something like 1 GB for mail and another for storage, I would be the first one to sign up. If they upgrade.

Don't know about Spymac, but Google's service will be web access only - no IMAP or POP access. And you do realize free = advertisements and/or personal data mining, don't you? Trust me, their not giving you this service out of the kindness of their hearts or for the betterment of humanity.

I'm not trying to say one service is better than another, but my preference is to be able to view my mail without ads across my screen.

Kind of like subscribing to XM radio - sure it costs $10 a month, but its essentially commercial-free (except for the syndicated news stations), more stations and better sound than free FM radio. .Mac isn't free, but offers some value-added services that the free ones don't.

Personally, I like the integrated iPhoto straight-to-.Mac features, IMAP mail (with web access when I need it) and Address Book and iCal-to-web features. I can easily do without the iDisk (I have a machine at work with 100GB of space I can access via SFTP whenever/wherever I need it), but it's the other features that I don't mind paying for. Sure, I could do it all myself if I wanted, but I have other things I need to devote my time to. .Mac just makes my life a bit easier. For me, it's worth the $8.33 a month. Just like XM radio.

[paully dub]

I'm suprised really. No one in the States is offering a free email + webspace package?

Through Free in France, I get 100mb free disk space and an email account. And like the name says, it's free, and ad free. Plus, you can create as many accounts as you like. Practically everyone I know has an account. Only thing is you have to have an address in France, since they send you the password via mail. The way they make their money is through their ADSL service, primarily. And they're pretty darn good.

The other stuff, like iSync, or Backup...well it isn't that hard to accomplish on your own is it?

I guess .mac is for those who want things simple, and well packaged. Nothing wrong with that - works for my Grandma, for example.

[macintologist]

How much bandwidth are you allowed per month on .Mac web hosting?

[Thinine]

I don't think anyone really knows. But instances of people's web site being shut down due to bandwidth usage have definitely decreased over the last two years or so. So the limit must have gone up (if there is a limit).

[dampeoples]

I have my own hosting, it's faster, more space, yadda, yadda.
I'm planning to get rid of .mac this year, but man the syncing stuff is nice!

[Thain Esh Kelch]

If you live outside the US, get ready for some ass-slow .mac.

[Cadaver]

Originally posted by paully dub:
I'm suprised really. No one in the States is offering a free email + webspace package?

Through Free in France, I get 100mb free disk space and an email account. And like the name says, it's free, and ad free. Plus, you can create as many accounts as you like. Practically everyone I know has an account. Only thing is you have to have an address in France, since they send you the password via mail. The way they make their money is through their ADSL service, primarily. And they're pretty darn good.

Yes, most ISP do offer mail and web space. I get three email addresses and 5MB of space (I think; perhaps its more) from my ISP. I don't care to use them, however. Often can't get the email name one wants, and some ISPs put ads or logos on hosted HTML.

[macintologist]

Originally posted by Thain Esh Kelch:
If you live outside the US, get ready for some ass-slow .mac.

Sad but true, even on 1mbps/128k dsl

I can't believe the Finder beachballs every time I want to load the iDisk (I dont have it stored locally)

I mean why can't Apple program the Finder so that it can peacefully load the iDisk in the background and let me do other things in the Finder.

I'm still wondering what bandwidth limit there is on .mac web hosting. 25gb/month? 50gb/month?

[iMan]

I don't use all the features but I still think it is VERY worth it. Especially with its wase of use. And it does offer alot of features that I do use and evenif you don't use them, its likely one day you will.

[Macpilot]

Yes.

[iNeusch]

Originally posted by Cliff_O:
Nonsense. I pay $120/year to Dreamhost to have my domain hosted on their Linux servers. My plan comes with 500MB of disk space (combined mail/ftp/web) and 25GB of monthly bandwidth. .Mac can't touch that. I have a network and network attached storage for backups and syncing, so .mac offers me no value whatsoever.

I can host you for cheaper than that

[Cliff_O]

Originally posted by iNeusch:
I can host you for cheaper than that

Perhaps, but I've been with Dreamhost long enough to have a strong comfort level in their operation. FWIW, they recently upped the disk space for my plan to 800 MB and 40GB of bandwidth.

To an earlier question, as far as syncing goes, I just grabbed Synk that I have yet to explore a bit. LaCie has free backup software that isn't crippled like Apple's backup program.

[Cliff_O]

Originally posted by iNeusch:
I can host you for cheaper than that

Perhaps, but I've been a customer of Dreamhost long enough to have a high level of confidence in their operation. FWIW, they recently upped the disk space on my plan to 800MB and the bandwidth limit to 40GB per month.

To an earlier question on syncing, I just grabbed Synk that I have yet to eplore. LaCie has free backup software that isn't crippled like Apple's.

[Randman]

Well, if rumors of greater .Mac integration with Tiger are true, .Mac will become more important. A redesign and faster iDisk would also be nice.