Henri:

I’m aware of the “do-it-yourself-.Mac” concept, but it requires considerable technical skills – and if you already have those skills (and are running a suitable server that supports WebDAV), you’re probably not in Apple’s target audience for .Mac anyway!

Henri:

I’m aware of the “do-it-yourself-.Mac” concept, but it requires considerable technical skills – and if you already have those skills (and are running a suitable server that supports WebDAV), you’re probably not in Apple’s target audience for .Mac anyway!

Henri:

I’m sorry to say there’s no such thing as a Service Level Agreement with .Mac. You get whatever you get, and even technical support is sometimes hard to come by.

You might be aware of this : it cost less…

http://www.tnpi.biz/computing/mac/tips/idisk/idisk-v2.shtml

Found in http://www.macosxhints.com.

HDR

You might be aware of this : it cost less…

http://www.tnpi.biz/computing/mac/tips/idisk/idisk-v2.shtml

Found in http://www.macosxhints.com.

HDR

Henri:

I’m sorry to say there’s no such thing as a Service Level Agreement with .Mac. You get whatever you get, and even technical support is sometimes hard to come by.

Joe,

With the Family subscription of “.Mac” yout get an 20 Gb of space disk, 10 Gb for the main account and the rest for the others account setup in “.Mac”. Even so it’s expensive for the disk space.

I haven’t been able to get the customer policies or SLA from Apple regarding the commitment on this “.Mac” service.

Cost should be based on SLA, SLA are based on Technical solutions, and those might explain the cost …

Joe,

With the Family subscription of “.Mac” yout get an 20 Gb of space disk, 10 Gb for the main account and the rest for the others account setup in “.Mac”. Even so it’s expensive for the disk space.

I haven’t been able to get the customer policies or SLA from Apple regarding the commitment on this “.Mac” service.

Cost should be based on SLA, SLA are based on Technical solutions, and those might explain the cost …

Eric: Cool. I’ll be very interested to see how well they compete. The more the merrier, especially if it means lower prices.

Eric: Cool. I’ll be very interested to see how well they compete. The more the merrier, especially if it means lower prices.

Joe,

There is a new storage provider opening up shop soon, although I wouldn’t be surprised if you already heard about them. They aim to compete with Amazon.com: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/07/nirvanix-to-challenge-amazon-s3/

Joe,

There is a new storage provider opening up shop soon, although I wouldn’t be surprised if you already heard about them. They aim to compete with Amazon.com: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/07/nirvanix-to-challenge-amazon-s3/

Colin,

I think your concern is warranted. Any time you trust the “cloud” to be the only place for something, you’re at least dependent, at most at risk.

So If .mac isn’t providing value, others will enter the space and compete with apple on price and services. Two great examples are

MarkSpace’s synctogether has done a fantastic job of providing a key service.

The box.net guys are also very interesting. Their socially savvy storage is amazing.

~Mattehw

Colin,

I think your concern is warranted. Any time you trust the “cloud” to be the only place for something, you’re at least dependent, at most at risk.

So If .mac isn’t providing value, others will enter the space and compete with apple on price and services. Two great examples are

MarkSpace’s synctogether has done a fantastic job of providing a key service.

The box.net guys are also very interesting. Their socially savvy storage is amazing.

~Mattehw

Colin: Only time will tell how long any of these other companies will be in business, but there’s no a priori reason to assume it won’t be plenty long enough. As for Apple, sure, they’ll hold onto your data forever, but they’ll also charge you $100 every year (and good luck talking to a real human being if you lose your data or have other problems). So, I certainly wish their competitors the best of luck!

Colin: Only time will tell how long any of these other companies will be in business, but there’s no a priori reason to assume it won’t be plenty long enough. As for Apple, sure, they’ll hold onto your data forever, but they’ll also charge you $100 every year (and good luck talking to a real human being if you lose your data or have other problems). So, I certainly wish their competitors the best of luck!

I use both Mozy and Crashplan. But I keep asking myself: how long will these (and other options) be in business?

I suspect .Mac has a better chance of long-term stability than any of the others mentioned. OK, maybe Amazon’s S3 has a better chance. But it is not for the average user. :-)

And as you mention, the real killer is UPSTREAM b/w. Even with 5 Mb/s at home off-site backups are slow.

Colin

I use both Mozy and Crashplan. But I keep asking myself: how long will these (and other options) be in business?

I suspect .Mac has a better chance of long-term stability than any of the others mentioned. OK, maybe Amazon’s S3 has a better chance. But it is not for the average user. :-)

And as you mention, the real killer is UPSTREAM b/w. Even with 5 Mb/s at home off-site backups are slow.

Colin