I finally decided that if I wanted a really good e-mail account that I might as well get it from the company I’ve come to rely on for most everything. As of June 1 I will no longer be using my Yahoo e-mail account (I actually pay the $20/year fee for POP access) and have decided to take advantage of the sweet .Mac sale going on right now. I can get the .Mac account for $30.00 off the retail $99.99 price. I realize I’m actually paying more for an e-mail (some of you may grimace at paying for e-mail – I used to be just like you) but I believe this will be the answer for my particular computing environment.
Being able to match my iBook settings/preferences at home with my PowerMac G4 at work will be seamless with .Mac syncing. Specifically I’m excited about my custom e-mail address, cjamesadams@mac.com. I’m also thrilled that .Mac offers a nice Address Book syncing feature. That was probably the toughest call in switching from Yahoo to .Mac because Yahoo had a really great Web based Address Book that I hated to give up, but I’ll be just as happy with my new one I’m sure. It does at least let me add a ton of extra fields that Yahoo wouldn’t let me do. Another great feature that I’ve been playing with some is the syncing of my iCal. I’ve had no real issues yet with syncing my home and work calendars and merging the information on both. That’s a real nice feature that Yahoo just didn’t capture enough of. Perhaps it was the Web based portion of their service that put me off. I’m really tied to my Apple applications and like using them locally. I’m also thrilled about the syncing of bookmarks. I have a ton of daily RSS feeds I read every morning and it’s nice to have them available to me at home as well. Of course I still use del.icio.us for my regular bookmarks but getting my RSS feeds at home is just a bonus. I’ve not yet played to much with my HomePage, iDisk or Backup but I plan to use those a whole lot more. After all, I might as well use what I’ve paid for. Only real drawback is if I like it too much, I’ll have to pay the full price next year – YIKES!