Alternatives to .mac?

[Judine]

My .mac subscription is about to expire and the articles on the Web
that discuss alternatives are a bit outdated. Having a gmail account,
I'm mostly interested in .mac for the backup service and virus
protection. I'm not technologically savvy so I thought I'd ask you who
are about alternatives, particularly for backup and virus protection.
Thanks much.

[Jeffrey C. Long]

it just so happens that i just posted links to three articles on .mac
alternatives on my delicious page.

htt://del.icio.us/jeffreyclong

maybe there's something there that could help.

on resource i've liked is sharemation. it's a webdav enabled free
space for storage. limited size though.

http://www.jeffreyclong.com

[Benjaloo]

OK, I may be looking for the Holy Grail here, but....I'd like to have a
GTD system that I can access via the Web AND sync to my Palm.
I need to be able to access it via a browser from any computer
(including my stupid Wintel maching at work).
I'd like to find a way to have my AddressBook, Calendar, and Palm Memos
(or text files, since I could sync them to my Palm via MacNoteTaker
conduit) accessible remotely.
I'm not a Unix expert, so a lot of the things people have suggested
involving Perl scripts, PHP. etc seem complex to me (I'm not afraid of
code--long ago I used to program, but I don't have time to learn
nowadays). I'd be happy to pay for webhosting--something like the
$100/year that .Mac charges doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
Right now I'm using Entourage on my Mac laptop, and finding it better
than Palm Desktop for sure.
I suppose I could switch to iCal and OS X's Address Book and Mail apps
and use .Mac, but I haven't figured out the memo/text file side of it,
and I don't know if you can access AB from a web browser. Does anyone
have any ideas?
thanks
Ben

[Jacques Perreault]

Also, make sure you download the latest version of Virex before it
expires. Virex itself will NOT expire, you can keep using it. Spymac
also has a huge amount of space to offer to users.

A good freeware alternative virus checker is clamXav, of note.

Jacques

[Charles Starrett]

Re: memo/text, I've been very happy with MacNoteTaker. The OS X
conduit is a very old beta, but works fine for me with Panther. Also,
it doesn't quite "sync" but I've found that it works well enough for
shuttling plain text files back-and-forth between Palm and Mac as long
as I remember its limitations.

http://mac-huwis.lut.ac.uk/~wis/programs/NoteTaker/NoteTaker.html

I honestly have not missed MemoPad at all and am very happy I took the
leap from the PalmDesktop to iCal/AddressBook/MacNoteTaker. It seems
reasonable to me that MacNoteTaker would work text files stored on a
desktop-mountable remote volume such as .Mac but I haven't tried it
myself.
HTH
Charles

[Arthur A. Vanderbilt]

I'd like to know what you mean by this. I've been experimenting with it
(MacNoteTaker), but it's been pretty much read-only on my Palm so far.
I'd like to avoid losing data with it ...

[Benjaloo]

My experience with MacNoteTaker has been that that things that have
been deleted on either side don't go away, but are resuscitated on both
sides after a sync, leading to quickly growing clutter.
I never lost anything--quite the opposite, as you can see.

[Charles Starrett]

The conduit "sync" works like this: the most recently edited file wins.
This means that between HotSyncs you are free to edit either document
*but not both!* It's not the best arrangement, but I've found that it
wasn't that hard to get used to. I've just established rules for
myself for which documents I'm allowed to edit on which device. If you
really *must* be able to freely edit the same document on both devices
between HotSyncs then MacNoteTaker probably wont work for you.

Also, it is true that deleting is difficult. One thing you must do is
"Empty Trash" on NoteTaker on the Palm. But that often isn't enough.
Every-so-often I have a cleaning session sitting at my computer with my
Palm and delete from *both* devices whatever documents I don't need --
finishing with Empty Trash. If you then HotSync, the clutter will be
gone.

Elegant? No. But it works for me, and I find working with text files
so much more convenient than "memos" that it's worth the trouble. That
said, I would *love* it if the author, or someone else, would create a
true syncing conduit...

[Arthur A. Vanderbilt]

Ah, that's not so bad. I can do with a bit of things showing up that I
thought were gone from time to time in that context.