Home > Consumer Reviews > .Mac 2002

This software package gives you an account with .Mac for one year. What that really means is that you'll have an @apple.com email address, 100MB of storage space on Apple's servers and a few other services. Those services are:

Webmail - Access to your mail from any computer with internet access.

Homepage - An insanely easy to use program for posting your own webpages (only the people you give the address to can access them).

iDisk - Your personal hard disk on the internet. Perfect for sharing files and archiving.

Backup - A very easy to use program for backig up your important files to iDisk, CD & DVD

Anti-Virus - A continually updated (by Apple) program to keep your Mac virus free.

Support - Online support in the form of FAQ's, Discussin Boards, hlepful links, Tips and the AppleCare Knowledge Base.

This is the perfect solution for people (like me) who don't want to be bothered with finding multiple other companies to preform these same tasks. It's also good to know that someone's watching your back. Apple does this by continually updating the support pages and anti-virus software as well as offering many free programs and demos through iDisk. For me though, the best feature (besides email) is homepage. It allows me to eaisly keep family and friends up to date with my life. I post a quartly newsleter as well as photos from special occations. And speaking of email it's terrific. It's not the most feature laden account out there, but it's more than enough for the average user.

For keeping family up to date, an internet based hard drive with 100MB of space AND anti-virus protection as well as backup software you could hardly do better than a .mac account.

If you run OS X on your Mac, .Mac is recommended to enhance the functionality of your machine. In order to use Apple's Backup and iSync utilities you need a subscription to .Mac. The .Mac mail service is not as user friendly or powerful as other services such as Yahoo mail, but the Apple Mail program makes it easy to get your .Mac mail. The value of the free games that you get throughout the year is negligible, but if Apple continues to add features and software available through .Mac it will be hard to make a case against subscribing.

Apple got a lot of grief for switching its free iTools service to the paid .Mac service. But really, the goods are there: 15 MB of fast, ad-free email storage, 100 MB of online iDisk storage space, Backup and anti-virus software, iCal integration, and more.

While this product is not yet released, it is interesting to note that Apple is offering the same services/software (it's called .mac) for [price] to folks who already have an iTools account. If you do not have an exisitng iTools account, then the discount offered here is excellent (if you need the services). For me, the extra iDisk space makes this a worthwhile expense.

Apple's suite of online tools is an incredible way to extend your digital hub, and as Apple keeps adding features and services, the value keeps going up!

If you'd like to see examples of what others are doing with their .Mac accounts, check out [the website].

Check it out, then buy a .Mac subscription! You won't be disappointed!