Synchronising vitals across 2 macs- calendera, contatcs, and emails

Can this be done for free?

It's a new question for me, but I now have a loan MacBook to go with my own iMac.

I'd love to have both working in tandem.

I managed to 'synhronise' my contatcs, but only by backing on address book and sending up via bluetooth.

I tried the same with iCal (admittedly from Leopard to Tiger), and that didn't work.

As for Mail, no chance. I had the McBook for the 5 days my IMac was down, and now my emails are disaster.

I'd love to all these things work together, I only use one email- gmail.
Can it be done without paying for .mac or mobile me?

Can I sync my two macs contacts and calendars via isync (like I do with my phone?).

Can I have both computers giving me a mail program that works, that shows all my inbox, sent items, etc across two computers? Even if I have to switch to another mail client instead of mail?

Or will I have to pay from service via apple to take care of this all?

Mail is easy, just set up the accounts to use IMAP instead of POP.

Great, thanks. That's would have been the biggest concern for me anyway.

Just one final question on that- is there anyway I can change my existing POP gmail account on Mail to IMAP, or do I have to set up a new one?

No you can change it. Just go into your gmail account settings and make sure IMAP access is on. Then you have to re-setup your Mail.app to use an IMAP connection instead of POP. If I remember correctly you can't just change this in Mail.app, but have to set it up as a new account, then delete the old one.

i've been trying to sync emails between two macs for what seems like forever! For some unknown reason, I can't copy my settings on my iMac on the MB and I've tried everything. The POP works ok, but the SMTP settings fail.

Time Warner and Apple tech support have been of no use at all - especially TW. The last guy to try to help admitted he didn't have a clue, but volunteered to read me my horoscope! And then told me to call Apple. Again, no help (but at least no horoscope)!

After researching, I was able to have all my TW emails forwarded to gmail. And using a different "rely to" address so it still would look like the mail came from one of my email addresses from my ISP was cool. Seemed like it would work and sort of did. However, I ended up with SO many duplicate emails in the inbox of gmail, so I deleted it and am now back to square one. Plus, I'm not crazy about the label thing vs folders. My designated "junk" in TW on the iMac also ended up again in Gmail. Argh!

This just shouldn't be that difficult! I'm beyond tired of messing with this dilemma.

Any ideas? I'm about ready to use MobileMe - which hasn't received great reviews, for sure. Thanks for any help.

Jenny- I followed lifeafter2am's suggestion, and set gmail up on mail with IMAP instead of POP- it's worked a treat so far. I only had both computers at hand for 2 days (iMac is gone back in for repair), but everything was synced- if I sent a mail from the iMac it appeared in my sent items on the MacBook, and vice versa. I have had one or two teething problems- sent messages are appearing in my inbox when I access gmail online, for one- but it's been a big success. When I have both computers at hand again, I'm sure I'll be able to rectify that one also.

So, in short, IMAP is the way to go!

lifeafter2am said:

No you can change it. Just go into your gmail account settings and make sure IMAP access is on. Then you have to re-setup your Mail.app to use an IMAP connection instead of POP. If I remember correctly you can't just change this in Mail.app, but have to set it up as a new account, then delete the old one.

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Thanks for all the help guys! Yet another question - sorry- when you say to re-setup my Mail.app, do you mean the gmail account? I assume so, but better to ask, even if it's a dumb question.

Time Warner (and Verizon Fios which I was considering switching to) doesn't offer IMAP. So, not delete my TW accounts and re-setup, just the gmail one, correct? Thanks again, Jennifer

jennymac said:

Thanks for all the help guys! Yet another question - sorry- when you say to re-setup my Mail.app, do you mean the gmail account? I assume so, but better to ask, even if it's a dumb question.

Time Warner (and Verizon Fios which I was considering switching to) doesn't offer IMAP. So, not delete my TW accounts and re-setup, just the gmail one, correct? Thanks again, Jennifer

Click to expand...

Yes you are correct.

Thanks, yet again. Also, I just set up the gmail account on the MB, not the iMac, right?

jennymac said:

Thanks, yet again. Also, I just set up the gmail account on the MB, not the iMac, right?

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You set it up wherever you are going to check your mail. As long as it as set up as IMAP everything will be the same on any computer you use.

Set it up on both if you want the emails to appear on both. IMAP is basically a two way communication system between your online gmail account and your computers- so every action should sync nicely on both machines, via the gmail server.

Oh, and what about the new Google lab feature to deal with all the duplicate emails?