Paid service over free service any day.
Paid service = someone is accountable to your $$
Free service = they can do what they want, and if it goes down for a while they answer to no one.
MobileMe all the way.
Apple MobileMe service is less reliable than Gmail, by far. So your “Paid service over free service any day, ”makes no sense.
These are some features that I use.
Price: Gmail is free; you can’t go wrong especially if you get everything you want/need from Gmail or any other free service.
Price: MobileMe is $99 for a single user and $149 for family account. Although, you can get it cheaper if you buy it of eBay or with new product.
Email Address: It may be harder to get Email address you want (first/last name) since many of them have been already taken.
Email Address: You have better case to get email address you want. But it may not be true if you have name like
JoeWhite@me.com or something like that.
Email Space: 7.4GB, this should be enough space for most users.
Web Album: 1GB.
Docs: 1GB, I love Google Docs. All of my old school papers, presentations, spreadsheets are there and I still have plenty of space to spare.
You can purchase additional storage that is shared between products Google 20 GB - $5/yr, 80 GB - $20/yr, 200 GB - $50/yr.
Space: An Individual subscription comes with 20GB of combined email and file storage and with family pack individual account gets 20GB of combined email and file storage, plus four family accounts, each with its own email address and 5GB of storage.
You can purchase additional storage.
Speed: By far, Google is way faster. If you are going to access your Gmail through your browser Google is a Ferrari.
Speed: Accessing MobileMe through you browser is just slow, it will do the job but it is simply slow.
Docs Edit/Sharing: You can add/share/edit your docs from the same window and that’s why I think Google Docs are better.
Docs Sharing: It is done through iWorks.com; it looks better but you can do more with Google Docs.
Web Albums: Picasa Web Album is way faster than MobileMe.
Web Albums: MobileMe album looks better, but it is much slower.
Email Rules: Google rules are more robust, you have more options to create rules you want.
Email Rules: MobileMe recently introduced rules and they work ok.
Labels: I love labels; they are color coded and very practical.
Labels: No labels
.
Chat: You can chat with other Gmail contacts and it can be done from the browser or desktop application.
Chat: You need desktop application.
Labs: They are very useful. They have some great Email or Calendar features which I constantly use. I do like their IMAP filter.
Labs: Its Apple, so they like to control everything.
Contacts: Part of the Gmail, it servers the purpose but nothing special.
Contacts: I like that you can sync it with your iPad, iPhone or Mac. Integration for Apple devices is better than Gmail.
Calendar: I like Gmail calendar, if you use it online it looks/works great. You can even set up email notification. When you integrate it with your iCal you will loose some notification features when creating meeting from iCal but overall its works good.
Calendar: Like contacts I like it little better due to integration with Apple products.
Themes: Some will like it Pink and some will like it Blue and some don’t care.
Themes: I am not saying that online MobileMe does not look good, here you just don’t have an option. But I dont see this big deal at all.
Desktop: If you use it in Mail, Outlook or some other client you will loose all those great features that you have online.
Desktop: I would say that here both Gmail and MobileMe are on the equal playing field.
Summary: Gmail is great free service, when used online I like it much more than MobileMe or any other online email service. However, due to having iPhone, iPad and Mac I use MobileMe for my contacts, calendar and secondary email.
Summary: Integration with Apple product is better. I like “Find my iPhone” service it provides.
Google E-Mail Sync: I had no problems with syncing Gmail to any of my devices.
Mobile E-mail Sync: Works fine.
iDisk: none
iDisk: file share (shared).
