MobileMe and iCloud

iCloud is a free service, so you don't need to pay.

You can alter the mail settings on your iMac after the transition to still get mail to synch on iCloud on the Snow Leopard machine.

Wilmut's Entering iCloud email settings manually in Snow Leopard or Leopard

http://www.wilmut.webspace.virginmedia.com/notes/icloudmail.html

biddymon wrote:

So, I expect to upgrade from MobileMe to iCloud on the MacBook, but what are the ramifications for the iMac? Will I need to pay for an installation of iCloud for the iMac?

If you have MobileMe mail set up to collect mail from external POP accounts you should cancel this before migrating, or you may find it still working in iCloud (where it isn't supposed to) and with no way of stopping it.

This will be the situation with Snow Leopard when you have migrated:

• Your email, calendars, and 'Find my iPhone' will be migrated to iCloud. Contacts and Bookmarks cannot be migrated from a Snow Leopard Mac.
• Your iDisk, together with website hosting and Gallery, will continue to work as before until next June.
• Syncing of Dashboard Widgets, Dock Items and Keychains between Macs, and Mail Accounts, Mail Rules, System Preferences, Signatures & Smart Mailboxes between Macs & iOS devices, will cease altogether.
• You will be able to access email and calendars on the iCloud website at http://icloud.com provided your browser is reasonably up-to-date.
• You will not be able to sync contacts or bookmarks from a pre-Lion Mac.
• You will be able to enter the server settings for email manually in the Mail application and access your email.
• You will not be able to sync your calendars directly.
• Some people have been able to set up calendar syncing by using the method detailed here - this is an unsupported hack and may not be reliable, and may stop working at some future point.
• There appears to be no method of syncing contacts (though Address Book on a Mac can be synced with Google or Yahoo address books - I don't know how reliable this is).

There are a couple of third-party solutions which may be of interest.

• BusyCal is an iCal-like calendar application with extra facilities: it can sync with the iCloud Calendar while running on Leopard, Snow Leopard or Lion. A single user licence (two machines allowed) is $49.99.
• Soho Organizer can sync Calendars and Contacts with iCloud on Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion. A single user licence (multiple machines allowed) is $99.99.