Cloud Computing Part 1: MobileMe

MobileMe is a very full-featured cloud computing service offered by Apple. MobileMe allows its users to sync their contacts, calendars, preferences and files between their iPhone/iPod Touch, Mac, and PC. At $99 a year, MobileMe is a more expensive cloud computing option but it provides many services that can be very beneficial to people that manage businesses or work in a field that requires them to use multiple computers. To get the full effect of what MobileMe really has to offer, we will start out with the example of someone that uses multiple Macintosh computers.
Say you already have your personal Mac set to your liking. It has all of your personal contacts in Address Book, your favorite web pages bookmarked in Safari, all of your important dates and appointments saved in iCal, and your email is all set up on Mail. Your Mac at work has all of your professional contacts, web pages, appointments, and email all set up, but you really want to have everything all in order at home and work. Having a MobileMe account will give you the ability to combine all of these features from both computers. This will give you the same basic computing experience on both machines. These features will also automatically be in sync when anything is added, edited, or deleted and these same features are available on the iPhone.
Using MobileMe on a PC is a little different. Safari is available for PCs and the bookmarks will sync, but Mail and iCal are Mac only. MobileMe will sync your Outlook dates and contacts instead. Do you need to have certain files available at home and work? Using iDisk will make will make files available on all computers you have registered with MobileMe. Not only that, but you will receive your own MobileMe email address and have the ability to post websites created in iWeb. Many people feel that MobileMe offers too many features and comes at a steep price. You can judge that for yourself with a 60 day free trial at www.apple.com/mobileme. For those of you that just want to have secure back ups of your computer, share files with friends and family, or just want to have files readily available anywhere you go, check out future posts for reviews on other cloud computing services.