Journal: News & Comment

Derek caves in

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Monday, September 30, is the day all those formerly free "iTools" e-mail and online disk space accounts from Apple Computer turn back into pumpkins. When the company announced in July that iTools would become .mac (pronounced "dot mac") and cost $100 US per year ($50 initially for iTools members), I was pretty darn cheesed off. Yet, a couple of weeks ago, I went and paid for a subscription. Why?

Well, Apple made it worth my money, that's why. There are the 100 4x6 photo prints from my digital files, a game (Alchemy Deluxe), a half-decent backup program -- called, reasonably enough, Backup -- that's useful for automated offsite storage of my e-mail, Virex anti-virus software with updates, and 100 MB of online storage (which I use for those backups I mentioned). I don't use the e-mail address.

I had set up seven other free iTools accounts, however, for everything from hosting videos to holding files from Web sites I designed for other people. I'm letting those ones expire.

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