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Kresh's Buying Advice
Don't buy it until you have talked to at least 10 people and they swear it has been working for them at least two weeks in a row.
It's a shame one has to take such drastic measures, but clearly Apple is/was lying about how bad the issues are/were with MobileMe - and not just the email either!

MobileMe is very, very poor, unbelievably SLOW.….. In a word ‘SHOCKING’
I came away from Windows because of such terrible products and service and what do I know. Mac is following the beast.
DON'T BUY THIS PRODUCT AND APPLE WILL BEGIN TO LISTEN, MONEY IS ALL THAY SEEM TO CARE ABOUT LATELY!!!!
Finally, I am steadily loosing trust in MacWorld, three and half mice, absolutely ridiculous.
Come on Mac sort this out !!!!

"And HomePage, which was supplanted by Web Gallery, continues to function but won’t be getting any further attention from Apple."
I've been asking Apple about this, but have had no answer so far. A support document stated that HomePage would fail to function on October 10 - although this has since been deleted from Apple's servers.
This is what it said:
“You will still be able to edit and delete your HomePage until October 10, 2008. Your published pages will stay live on the web for as long as you remain a MobileMe member, and you can continue to visit them at http://homepage.mac.com/username.”
So it looks like Apple will keep HomePage galleries live but you won't be able to delete or edit pages after October, and you won't be able to add any new pages either.
So, the review is wrong in suggesting that HomePage lives on. It will be a zombie.
And HomePage offers several features that MobileMe's Web Gallery does not. There's no view button counter, no themes, etc.
This quiet deletion of what I think was .Mac's killer feature may well lead to me dropping my account and moving to Flickr.
If Apple ever answers me, I'll get back in touch.

kresh said:

Fine, I'll add my support. Despite the initial problems I have been happily using the lion's share of the features solidly for the last couple of weeks with only a minor delay. The biggest problem for me was publishing with iWeb but that has been sorted out for me last weekend and has been working ever since.

I've applied ALL the updates so I wonder if everyone else has, maybe that's why there are so many problems. It's been working fine on my Mac Mini and my recently purchased MacBook Pro.

As for speed I have had no problems whatsoever with speed and our Internet in New Zealand sucks.

How many of you here are programmers? How many of you have released a product that was 100% bug free first off? I'm picking 0.

I recommend.

I recommend it as well. I live in Japan as a US citizen and have had no issues other than email during the first few days. I haven't used Homepage since 2006 since I moved to iweb.mac.com. Much better in my mind. Technology changes and migrating from homepage.mac.com to iweb is pretty easy. Not to discount the folks whom still continue to use homepage, but you have lots of time to move to something else. Pain in the butt, yes, but not a complete surprise.
I also second the updates - iweb now publishes flawlessly. All of my data synch's too.

The review doesn't mention Web publishing support with iWeb, which is significant: there's nothing out there that compares with the iWeb/MobileMe combo for seamless integration of a sophisticated Web authoring package and its corresponding Web server. I consider this alone worth the $99. The full complement of iLife and the MobileMe Web server is unique in computing, there's nothing like it for Windows, not even close. How else can you, with the click of a couple of buttons, publish videos, podcasts, Web galleries, or build professional-quality Web pages?
You can also put in my vote for having no problems with MobileMe--it's worked great for me since the initial transition, and it's working great for the 99% of the other happy camper MobileMe subscribers who haven't posted to these forums...

No body seems to have noticed its real flaw...

There is no full body searching of emails. After all the hype apple made about search being the future and introducing spotlight, you would have thought this would be a must have feature. Ever since search became easier, all my filling habits have changed. I now rely purely on search. AND ITS NOT INCLUDED.

Gmail is free and its included.

Other flaws include:
limited email address (sometimes meaning that your "personal" email address ends up being iandean153@me.com
No Icon for Notes (I hoped these would be sycronised with mail, and my iPhone, but nah!)
No synchronization for To Do Lists in mail. (This i thought would have been especially important to sync with the iphone due to there nature)
Limited Pop 3 support. I think i might have the best email address in the world, but mobileme wont download email from it automatically. I have to click a button manually. This is not helpful for push email on my iPhone
Reply mask - When I reply to emails I like them to look like they've come from the best email address in the world, you cannot do this from web based mobileme

All of the above I can do with Gmail. The only problem is... gmail does not push the email. Apple.. sort it out. It really hasn't changed much besides a visual makeover.

Come on, Macworld...your kind comments about MobileMe come simply out of your desire to not tick off the Apple giant. MobileMe is STILL (as of July 24th) ridden with Sync (and other) problems. Those who've used it will readily agree (if they don't hidden agendas surrounding their commets). Additionally, I'm on a 15 mbps connection and MobileMe is like refrigerated molasses.
When I first subscribed to .Mac I "thought" I needed the sync feature for iCal and Address Book, Bookmarks, etc. on multiple Macs. Now that I've learned of free and/or better sources to sync I find that MobileMe is simply not worth $100/year. Eventually, most folks learn that the suite of Google apps, whether used with a Gmail account or a Google Apps account, is far superior, thus rendering iCal and Apple Mail pretty much useless. Address Book is still a great tool, but it can be synced with Gmail contacts and other Macs using a small, inexpensive application.
I think MobileMe is just Apple's best attempt to provide its features and services to a segment of users who can't figure out how to do these things on their own...and that's fine, I'm glad MobileMe is available for those folks. But don't try to tell everyone how great MobileMe is when it clearly should be still in beta.
LarryMcJ

What I'm most disappointed about is the lack of Linux support for web-based Mobileme apps. I was planning on buying an inexpensive eeepc running Linux, but now, I don't know what to do ( I don't want the Windows version, as I'm tired of dealing with Window problems). I have tried Safari on Linux running under Wine, but it doesn't support HTTPS. I've tried Konqueror, which is based on webkit and that too didn't work (I can login with Konqueror, but I get Javascript errors). I still can't figure out why Apple Won't support Firefox on Linux! Does anyone know if Apple is going to support Linux???

Re: MobileMe
So far I do like MobileMe with a few caveats. The speed is not an issue but the unreliability is. Most of the times changes happen on all three of my devices in a reasonable period of time. SOMETIMES but not always, when I remove or change an event in my calendar it miraculoulsly multiplies and triplicates itself in one of the other devices. If trying to figure out which to remove is tricky. Also, If I change an event by dragging it to another time, it doesn't always remove itself from the first time thus putting it in TWO time slots (two different days) So, an appointment w/ a client that I have set up for tomorrow that has been changed to Saturday may still show up as existent in both tomorrow's calendar AND on Saturday. UH UH!! that is a no-no.
I too am disappointed in MacWorld these days. It is becoming clearer and clearer that the writers have a bias for Mac and it's poducts and give higher ratings than are really warranted. Three and a half is a bit high for the present state of MobileMe. Apple has not really been great in really helping people know how to make the transition from .mac to Me. The change in iDisk is really confusing on how to share documents w/ my other computers and sometimes it takes two or three tries to show up on the other computer. We need more REAL instruction. I am an old iDisk fan and it was always hard then as well.
another place that Macworld was off is with VirusBarrier x5. It does really slow down your system and 4.5 is too high of a rating.
Come on Macworld. Get your groove back. You are always my first source of information. Help me trust you again.
Neil

I've been using MobileMe since three days after launch and it has been great. I agree that MobileMe's iWeb publishing and website hosting is excellent and is worth at least $50 a year. It has worked seamlessly so far and integrates perfectly with my own private domain name from GoDaddy.
MobileMe is still missing some needed features like push from Macs, Notes/To Do syncing, etc. However, for now, MobileMe is doing a respectable job of keeping all my info in sync between two Macs and my iPod Touch. For me, this is worth another $50 a year.
I have read the many horror stories about MobileMe where email doesn't work and everything is slow. I'm sure Apple is working diligently to resolve these issues but let's keep clear that the problems aren't affecting everyone.
Unfortunately, MobileMe got off to a rocky start, but I trust that Apple will work over the next few months to deliver on all their promises for the service. Only time will tell whether this new service stands the test of time.

It's all good for me except for the loss of iCards. I used it more often than almost any other feature. It was so much cleaner, Mac-like, and more reliable than all the flash-based card sites out there. I hate getting flash cards and refuse to send them. Half the time the don't work, or you have to register on some stupid site. Not worth the bother for the rinky-dink tunes and middle-brow art. God, I hope Apple brings this simple function back.

I am amazed at how many people are upset with Apple over this. MobileMe has worked flawlessly for me, after some initial hiccups. Things are pushed to my iPhone within seconds of hitting "the cloud," and syncing all the calendars between my uber-organized wife (on a pc running outlook) and my mac and my phone has been absolutely awesome.
Are there things I wish were incorporated that aren't? Sure. And hopefully some of them will be implemented soon. But it is already WELL worth the cost if it stays as-is.
@LarryMcJ: I wonder what agenda you think is surrounding my comments. I am web-savvy enough to "figure out how to do things on (my) own," I just really appreciate the ability to just click on "Publish" when I want to publish my site. Takes the hassle of FTP and hand-coding everything out of my life. The sync between mail, iCal, and contacts is seamless, and yes I could figure out a way to do it cheaper, but I am perfectly satisfied to pay Apple to make it easier. So, I will choose not to be offended by your baseless attack.