MobileMe: Not for me...

I decided to take up the MobileMe free trial to see if it was something I'd be happy paying £70 per year for. Initially I was impressed with how it looked and how well it integrated with iLife and the Mac and iPod generally; however, after about six weeks I've decided not to take up the subscription after all.

The main things that made up my mind were:

(1) Mail - slow and unreliable. I just found that my other mail services had less downtime and were quicker to respond/update. I also had problems when it told me it couldn't send a message and to try later but actually had sent it - so I ended up sending it twice.

(2) Back to My Mac - won't work with my HomeHub. Ok the initial problem isn't MobileMe - it's the crappy uPnP implementation on the HomeHub; however, the Apple info to allow you to get BtmM working without uPnP isn't exactly easy to find. In the end, after much experimenting with manually opening ports etc., I just gave up.

(3) I can get it all elsewhere for free.

So whilst I liked the way it looked and it was well integrated MobileMe simply didn't perform well enough for me to justify the subscription. I can get other, in most cases as good (or better), equivalent web services for nothing. They may not be integrated but that's something I can live with.