mobileme – doesn’t work for me! drop box and windows live to the rescue!
I’ve been curious about MobileMe for quite some time and have never bothered taking advantage of the free 60 day trial until I bought and installed an AirPort Extreme router and hooked up my 1TB drive to share it across the network. I read that with a MobileMe account, you can access that hard drive online without having to continuously adjust the IP settings. I’ve been reading about it and saw the mixed reviews and finally decided to take the plunge and try it out… and boy was I disappointed and even more baffled on why people would pay $99 a year for this (even $65 is expensive if you buy it on Amazon).
Going through the trial registration was easy, except that it asks for a credit card but they won’t charge you until day 61 of using this. I’ve set a calendar reminder to cancel it on day 59… I don’t want to take any risks. On the Mac and on the PC, it looks pretty simple using the web interface where you can access your e-mail, photos, calendar, contacts, and idisk. Nothing too really special especially from someone who’s been using Gmail and Windows Live for years. E-mail interface is very simple and matches the OS X interface, but I still prefer Gmail’s because it’s much more intuitive and customizable. Then there’s the contact list and calendar which which is clean looking but no use to me because I use an Exchange server to sync with my iPhone and Touch Pro.
And finally there’s the Photo Gallery which everyone is ranting and raving about. The layout is great and accomadates iPhoto very well but it is not without it’s short comings… I have pictures from my European trip that I wanted to upload, which is about 1000+ photos but MobileMe’s photo gallery limits only 500 photos per album. WTF?! I am NOT going to pay $60-$100 for a ridiculous limitation such as that! WindowsLive Gallery has no such limit and it’s FREE! Yes, I know iPhoto doesn’t sync with it, but I’d rather go through the problem of exporting the album from iPhoto and uploading it through Windows! Also MobileMe gives you 20GB whereas Windows Live gives you 25GB to work with.
What disappointed me even further was accessing the hard drive through the internet feature (that was the main reason for me in considering trying out MobileMe) which doesn’t work on Windows. It works phone on Snow Leopard but I work with multiple computers and multiple operating systems. Also, the iDisk desktop feature only works in Mac OS X as well forcing Windows users to use the web interface making it very cumbersome and doesn’t suit my needs. I’d rather use SkyDrive which is FREE if that were the case. I’ve also read that a lot of people have dumped the iDisk (Mac and PC users) for Drop Box which works perfectly on both operating systems and you can also use the portable app to sync your thumb drive if you need to which ABSOLUTELY suits my needs. Drop Box only gives you 2GB but that’s currently more than what I need (you can pay for more space) and is cross platform capable.
If you don’t already have a decent e-mail service, want a very easy to use photo gallery suite, and online storage then MobilMe may be worth trying out. However, I would highly recommend you save your money and use free online alternatives such as Windows Live which gives you a photo gallery, online storage, e-mail services, and more. Also, for cross platform capable online storage, I really recommend getting Drop Box which is amazing, quick and reliable. MobileMe is a decent concept but as of now, it fails to meet expectations especially for a paid service.
