Help .mac question

I have had been using .mac for my email for a long time and do not want to spend $100.00 renewing it just for email .I do not want to loose all my emails but have no way to back them up . It is like they got you Apple does not let you back up your .mac emails on your hard drive .. Does anyone have an idea on how to do this , so I can cancel and get a gmail account and not loose all of my emails with addresses ..HELP !

You could start a Gmail account now and just forward all of your .Mac email to the Gmail address... :black:
Or you could configure Mail to download your .Mac email, too.

You could start a Gmail account now and just forward all of your .Mac email to the Gmail address... foward each one seperatly I have thousands ?


Or you could configure Mail to download your .Mac email, too. I am not sure I understand this ....
... download your .Mac email, too what and how ? thanks
__________________

Anyone ??

Set up an account the program Mail to accept .Mac accounts - see the Preferences to Add Account

Yeah, but Mail has a special profile for .mac accounts that uses IMAP, which stores the messages on the server AFAIK?

hmmm... it has options for IMAP and .Mac, would .Mac still store on a server :-\