Thanks for giving me the courage to leave AOL and go to mac.com. I”m almost there! getting closer anyway! I’ve been with AOL since they were first around, some 20 years, so it’s been difficult to say goodbye….

@Laura, I also want to post a topic on mac.com as well, as that will also run you, last I checked, about $100.00 a year. Please comment back and let us know what it is about mac.com that is of interest to you?

In many cases, I would say it is also a service you do not need. It has certain features, that if you need them, may be of value. There are also many ways to accomplish the same thing that might not cost anything.

I do not want to give the impression I am knocking mac.com, as to some, it will be valuable. I have a feeling, to most, it is unnecessary.

I doubt this will happen again, but when I first got broadband I had AT&T. AT&T called their service @home and everyone got an address at @home.com. Through some legal reason AT&T lost the rights to the home.com domain and with absolutely no notice had to change my address to att.com. Then later AT&T sold there cable division to Comcast, once again changing the address. this time at least had about one years notice. So I never moved, never really changed ISPs and had go through three addresses.

@Matt, exactly. I still have a client who at times, tries to get passwords and such, and I know they are going to her old @home address. The free email address that your ISP gives you is literally worthless. I have one for Comast, I imagine I can set up any number more. I have never even logged into it once.

According to AOL, you can keep your AOL email address even if you quit paying.

http://daol.aol.com/mailmessaging/email

@John, thanks so much for that link, that is actually pretty nice of AOL to offer. I would consider it an option, and still suggest people get out of the aol.com system.

I am a bit biased, which is why I said to stay away from hotmail and yahoo. I have administered email servers for about 10 years now, and those three email providers are near impossible to work with. We have constant issues delivering emails to them.

As a matter of fact, if you are a hotmail user, and you subscribe to our email newsletter, there is a good chance they will not deliver it to you. Too many emails to them over a short period of time and they block them.

I then have to spend weeks working with them to get approved to be a verified sender.

AOL has some of the same precautions set in place, which in general amount to ban first, prove you are not a spammer later.

I used .Mac for a couple of years but I found that I don’t need the features and services offered through .Mac. I use Comcast for high speed internet and I switched to a gmail e-mail address that I use through Mail on my Mac.

I like saving $$$ by not paying for .Mac. But if you want .Mac, I recommend buying it through Amazon.com for a $30 savings: Apple .Mac 5.0

@Scott
Great post.
Can’t wait to see your Mac.com topic published, I’d like to add my complaints as .mac email has been the ONLY part of my Apple experience that I find disappointing - and it would be great if that could be improved.

I have an ISP which allows 8 or 10 e-mail addresses, I have a Yahoo.com e-mail address, I have a .mac account with an e-mail address and several aliases, and …. I use them all - LOL!

The Yahoo address I use to run my own Yahoo groups mostly. I am fairly busy on the net and have a need for all these e-mail addresses. One address would NOT cut it. I had a g-mail account … I wonder what I did with that …..

Anyway, I love .mac for ease of use to throw up a web site. Mind you I use iWeb to make web sites and upload them to my web hosting etc. I basically use both for different reasons. Yes, I probably pay too much, but I find .mac handy. I have thought of cancelling it but I just like it for little movies and ease of use for family stuff, mostly. The other I use mostly for my web site.

Judie

PS - I should say I use .mac for putting up things like photo albums, slide shows and so on - family stuff.

@MacRussian, we hope to get to the post soon. (About .Mac). I too have found the email to be unreliable, and some of the other services a bit slow and flakey. In spirit, it is a nice idea, greate photo galleries, very simple way to end up presenting complex things. If Apple could keep up to speed with the demand I think it would be better.

As soon as we get a full report out, we will make sure to let you know.

@Judie, thanks for the comments. There are always nice uses for .Mac. I just want to point out there are other free methods to accomplish the same task.

There seems to be strong demand for this data, so we will get to a post on it very soon.

Hi, Scott.

Well, I’m interested in knowing about the free places for sure.

Judie

Thanks for helping people understand that they don’t need to pay that $120 connectivity fee if they already pay for broadband elsewhere. You can definitely KEEP your AOL address and not pay anything for the service. When AOL switched to free service years ago, I cancelled my payment. I’ve been enjoying AOL at no cost ever since. I like many of the benefits - most particularly its voice mail services. With it, I’m able to listen to my email by phone on a toll free number and have my telephone voice mail messages sent to my email address in a wav file. Both of these are invaluable to me - particularly because I travel a great deal. With it, I don’t need to access a computer or have a blackberry to retrieve all my email and home voice messages remotely. And I’ve been able to keep my original email address for twenty years without interruption.

@Amy, thanks for also pointing out you can keep the aol.com email address and use other services. I feel for all of those people who have a auto credit card charge happening every month and just do not realize they no longer need to even pay.

Glad you added your comments, as I was not entirely familiar with all the workings of AOL, I just knew most people do not need much of it anymore.

Yes, there are other ways to accomplish what can be done with .Mac. But, for a lot of people that is a lot of work setting up online backups, photo storage (even from your iPhone), Mail, Sync Bookmarks, Keychains, etc. between your Mac’s, Web site location, and 10 GB of online storage.

As far as I am concerned the $8.40/month that I pay for .Mac (I never pay more than $70/year for it) is a good buy. And, it lets me have those benefits in a Mac integrated manner that I consider part of the Mac experience.

For other users such as my Mom and Daughter it is the only way to go. I’m not about to try to set them up with the alternatives.

@RickPrather, thanks for posting, you are absolutely right. There are strong cases where certain people are going to benefit from .Mac. What I do not like is how on starting a new computer up, Apple pushes it in a way that makes it seem like you have to have it. You almost feel you can not register your computer without filling out that screen.

I want to educate people on what the services are, as I have a feeling it will be pretty divided on who needs them. I know some very advanced Mac users who swear by it as well, so it is much a to each his own case. Mainly, we want to make sure people know what they are getting into, rather than blindly walking into paying for something they may or may not need.

You don’t need .Mac or AOL. If you already have a service provider you don’t need either of them. Most providers will give you an email address and space to create your own website if you want. AOL also blocks parts of the internet. They only let you go to where they want you to go. That’s why I gave up AOL years ago. Don’t be limited by the service that charges you almost double for very little. .Mac does give you extra features that AOL does not. Such as 10 gigabytes of online storage that you can access your online files anywhere there is an internet connection. Also access to webmail, calendar, syncing, backups and more. .Mac is more of an add-on service and isn’t a service provider remember that.