I’ve already had my grumble about the overall value of a .Mac account, but recently four more posters have added their voices to those who wonder about the feature-to-cost benefits of .Mac.

Matthew Russell at macdevcenter.com wonders why in this day and age there is no server-side spam-filtering. “My $100 a year per account should at least buy me that ability,” he says. Without it, he is open to every spammer’s email fishing attempt.

Retrophisch has decided not to renew his .Mac account. It’s not worth it. Apple no longer offers any virus protection package with its .Mac account, and Gmail offers him more space and a faster user interface at a much cheaper price.

In a post titled, “Why isn’t Apple jumping in?”, the author at atasuki.co.uk is bewildered by .Mac’s lag in picking up the new features offered by Web 2.0 services.

He lists a number of things that would make .Mac much better—tagging, deals with Web 2.0 sites like flickr, delicio.us and Last.fm to bring greater integration, making FileVault work with iDisk, and more. Lastly, he suggests, “integrate iChat with a VOIP provider like Wengo. The AIM deal was great for its time, but the world has moved on and frankly so should you.”

Finally, Steven Frank, co-founder of Panic, Inc. (Transmit, Unison, Stattoo, etc) believes that:

For the pro Mac user, the .Mac service has always been a bit of a hard sell. It’s great for the more consumer level user, but for the geeks it’s getting harder to justify by the day.

He lists cheaper, often free alternatives to many .Mac features in a useful post.

He is going to renew though. It’s syncing that has him by the short and curlies:

So, having said all that, when my .Mac renewal comes up in three days, I’m probably going to renew. Even though it sometimes acts strangely, I’ve become dependent on syncing, and I think that’s really the only reason I’m renewing at this time.