What will happen to my mac e-mail account if I don't go to Icloud

Question

I have just updated to Snow Leopard but do not want to add the extra memory to run Lion.  When Mobile me finishes if I don't join icloud will I still have an email account with mac.  I do not have anyother mac devises so really don't think I need icloud?

Answer 1

If you do not migrate your MobileMe account to iCloud before the end of June it will cease to work, everything will be deleted, and you will lose your email address.
You can migrate from MobileMe to iCloud at http://me.com/move even with Snow Leopard: when asked to confirm that your Mac is running Lion just lie and say 'yes'. Of course you won't be able to access iCloud directly from your Mac.
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.  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.
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).