[steve77uk]

Hello

Please bear with me, there are two parts to this!

I need some advice please ladies and gents...

I have got and renewed my full .Mac account with my wife having an extra email address which I understand is only 50mb of email storage space - which I suppose has suited her ok over the past year...

I have got a MacBook and also an iMac so thought it would be easier for her to use both and have a .Mac account and sync the two together with Bookmarks and contacts / address books and email etc...

Now, then comes the parents, I gave them my old iMac G5, and am I am not too sure if they will ever utilise a full .Mac account 1GB but know that the backup program that comes with it is very good and easy to use, they can either buy an external HDD or backup to DVD's automatically - so far I have been impressed using it on mine - however I have not done a test restore...

I am also wanting them to use iWeb a bit to upload some pics for the family to see, however, I am wondering whether 250MB of webspace will be enough for them considering the fact that it appears the 250MB is split automatically down the middle between email and webspace...

Anyway, I have taken the plunge and upgraded my full .Mac account to a family pack... The only doubt in my mind is that the sub accounts only get 250MB of combined email and idisk space...

Question: I cannot seem to find a way of increasing the email over the iDisk space - is this me being a plank or can you not do it?

Does anyone else out there have a .Mac family pack? What do you think to it? Any niggles?

The next part of the question is online photo printing. (compared to Apple Photoprinting) TruPrint.co.uk had an offer to print 100 6x4 photos for £1 which was a good offer. I helped my mother (new to Mac) to email photos to them (100 broken down in batches of 5) because I came accross a problem where I could only email 30 MB at a time (using Pipex's email servers).

Now I tried to do this on my email (Mac) and find that I can only send emails up to 10MB!!!! I cannot believe this!

BT allow me to do 50 (although cancelled that account), Pipex allow me to send 30 MB, but I just cannot understand how Mac will limit it to 10MB... I think my queries have come after I had doubts over renewing my subscription and now my parents are moving over to Mac (for everything) they think it's daft they will only be able to send 10MB at a time...

They have used Apple for Photo Printing but I find they are a bit more expensive than the other online sites albeit that it is VERY simple to do and you can send them a ton of photos in one go...

I want to send photos to TruPrint using email (you have to email or upload one at a time because they don't make an uploader for OS X as do other photoprinting sites that are cheaper than Apple) but will find it a bit restrictive to send full size pictures some more than 10MB...

So basically is there anyone here in the UK that uses a photo printing site such as TruPrint or Bonus Print that has their own OS X uploader or plug into iPhoto than can make this as easy as possible!!!!???

Thanks for your help / comments in advance, I know this is a long one!

[Wraven]

OK, I have the .Mac Family Pack and can answer the email / iDisk space question (working on the answer)...

Someone else take the printing question...

OK, here's what you do. Log in to .Mac using your sub-account. Once logged in, click on the bordered link of your name towards the top of the screen (i.e. your account settings). You will be asked to log in again. Do so. Then, click the Storage Settings link. Voila! The options are available to change as you wish. Have fun!

As an aside, since all of my wife's mail is stored locally (in Mail), I have her email set up to use only 20MB, and her iDisk set to 236 MB... That seems to work for her - YMMV.

As for the Family Pack itself, it seems to work pretty well for my setup. I am the only "power user" if you will, and so I have the main account. My wife has 1 sub-account. I have 3 other names reserved as sub-accounts for my two children and to-be-born child. These 3 sub-accounts are not really used since my kids are still little, but it is nice having the names reserved.

The Family Pack is a little pricey, but both myself and my wife use Mail and iWeb quite a bit so we think it is a bearable cost. Hopefully this MWSF adds more to iLife to make it a better value (or we see a price drop). My renewal comes up in March and I'll probably renew either way.

[steve77uk]

Cheers Wraven,

I have just done that again and now it works, maybe I did something wrong, but I logged in as the wife and clicked on storage and able to do it like the primary account... I think I mucked up earlier...

I appreaciate the response... I think you hear that much negativity about .Mac you start to look into it a bit deeper and then try and pursuade yourself not to go for it... Oh well, done it now.. until next year!!

Cheers!

[steve77uk]

Just been looking deep into Apple's Support Site...

.Mac: Email Account Specifications Learn the specifications for .Mac (pronounced "dot Mac") full and email-only accounts. Mailbox size You get 1 gigabyte (GB) of storage on the .Mac servers with a full .Mac account. Email-only accounts have a 50 MB storage limit that can only be increased by upgrading to a full .Mac account. You can designate storage space to your .Mac Mail account and your iDisk. For example, if you need more storage space for your email messages, you can set your .Mac Mail storage capacity to 640 MB and reserve 384 MB of storage for your iDisk. Full .Mac account holders may add on up to ten email-only accounts. Sending Messages .Mac has several safeguards in place to ensure that only .Mac members send messages with the Mac.com outgoing mail server. Among them are reasonable limitations on: The number of messages that can be sent each day (200 messages) The number of recipients that can be sent to each day (400 recipients) The number of recipients a message can be addressed to at one time (100 recipients) The size of outgoing messages There is also a 10 MB maximum size for messages sent or received using the .Mac mail system.

Bummer...

[MagSafe]

For the sharing of photo's, rather than going through the process of creating an iWeb site can't you just show them iPhoto Photocasting?

I just think using iWeb for that would just be complete overkill.

[steve77uk]

Originally Posted by MagSafe For the sharing of photo's, rather than going through the process of creating an iWeb site can't you just show them iPhoto Photocasting? I just think using iWeb for that would just be complete overkill.

My mother wanted to have printed photos in her hand so to speak, but I am trying to get her to use iWeb for people to look at, but we also have a lot of family members who do not have computers you see...

With P&P those 100 photos only cost her £2.40!

I think I am basically after a way of uploading photos to a company who will print them out for us like apple do but cheaper...

When I had a PC Bonusprint.com downloaded software that would upload the pics for you...

[mattf]

I haven't used truprint, but I've trialled similar products from photobox and snapfish (?). They usually provide FTP access as well as sending by email / uploading via Java applet. Is this an option for you?

Edit - btw, if you're tempted to trial either of the above, check out http://www.quidco.com (I have absolutely NO ties with them, other than an account - they don't do referrals; in case anybody thinks I'm spamming)

[turtle]

Originally Posted by steve77uk My mother wanted to have printed photos in her hand so to speak, but I am trying to get her to use iWeb for people to look at, but we also have a lot of family members who do not have computers you see... With P&P those 100 photos only cost her £2.40! I think I am basically after a way of uploading photos to a company who will print them out for us like apple do but cheaper... When I had a PC Bonusprint.com downloaded software that would upload the pics for you...

For the pictures your mother wants to make available online, Photocasting would be the easiest way for her. I'm not sure about prints since I *rarely* ever print images nowadays. Most photo site will allow the FTP uploading to them and that would be your best bet since there won't be a limit on files sizes. Kodakgallery has an iPhoto integration, though I have never used it.

I have a .Mac family pack to al love it. I'm the power user and have the main account as well as one of the subordinate accounts. I only use the main account for web storage stuff and my subordinate account for personal stuff.