billpalmer.net

Hmm, Apple's .Mac email is currently down. My Mail client claimed so, and webmail.mac.com confirms it. I'm pointing this out not as a complaint, but actually as a compliment; as far as I can recall, it's been at least six months since I tried to access it and found that it was not available. The best part is that in my experience over the years, when it does go down, it's generally only for a few minutes. Perhaps it's gone down at times when I wasn't online, but I'd say it's fairly impressive nonetheless.

When people using "free" email accounts ask me why I continue to pay $99 a year for .Mac, I ask them about the problems they've had with email over the past year, and if they might not be willing pay eight bucks a months to essentially make them go away. And then there's the whole thing about having to change your email address each time you change service providers, or each time your service provider gets bought out by another company. No thanks. Email isn't all that important to a lot of people, but it's certainly worth eight dollars a month to me to ensure an essentially trouble-free experience.

I know there are some folks out there who love their Gmail, or yahoo, or some other service, or even run their own mail server in-house. But I'll stick with .Mac, thanks.

Now, if .Mac would only come back online, so I can get back to work...