At Dot Mac Dot Com

After installing Jaguar on my iBook I went along with the suggestion to try using .Mac just to see what all the fuss about their charging for it was all about. It's not bad, really. I remembered that I had an old iTools account so I got a discount on the first year subscription which makes it even better. For $50 I get 100Mb on-line storage space, 15Mb mail queue which I can read from anywhere in the world via a web browser [ important since I may not have an internet connection at home for a few weeks when we arrive in Helsinki ], simple backup software and various other little things I doubt I'll use but...for $50 it's worth it to see if I'll use it enough to warrant resubscribing next year. GUI mail clients are just not my speed and it's a pity they can't embed mutt into the .mac mail web client :)

The web page creation tools are painful and I'll have to replace my experiment soon with something via BBEdit but I can see how someone who has no familiarity with the web might find them to be very useful getting started. The iCal features will also be very appealing.

Overall, Apple has done a very nice job with .Mac and I'm not really sure why people are making such a fuss about paying for the service especially since ISPs, what few are left after years of charging too little for their services, offer less for more money. For those who can make use of the services .Mac has to offer it's nearly a bargain.