Will these Macs play nice together?

January 17, 2013 7:21 PM

I have an iMac desktop running OS X 10.6.8 and a newly acquired MacBook Air running 10.8.2 and I want to make them be as friendly with one another as possible. Can you hope me?

Mostly, I want to know what the most seamless way to make my mail work between the two is. I've been using Mac Mail on the iMac (with my riseup.net account) and it works well. On the air, I've been using Thunderbird with the same account. I think I like Thunderbird more than mac mail. I would love it if the two instances of Thunderbird (one on each machine) could operate in tandem; I delete an email on the iMac, it is automatically deleted on the air, etc.

Is that possible, or am I the tech idiot I have always thought myself to be?

What other cool things can I do with these things?

Also, I rather like the version of OS X on the air. Can I upgrade the iMac to that version for free or cheap?

Boy, I'm really bad at getting computers 'putin.

posted by broadway bill to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Set up IMAP on both of them instead of POP.

You can upgrade to the latest version of OSX through the App store for like $30, I think, assuming your iMac was made in the last few years.
posted by empath at 7:23 PM on January 17, 2013

For ML on an iMac, it's Mid-2007 or newer.
posted by phaedon at 7:27 PM on January 17, 2013

Response by poster: Well, the IMAP thing seems to be the way to go, but I can't get it set up properly on the air. Not sure if I am just bad at this, or if riseup's instructions are characteristically awful. Either way, thanks for the suggestion empath! Hopefully I can get it all together.
posted by broadway bill at 7:55 PM on January 17, 2013

Install Dropbox to both computers, and watch documents in your Dropbox folder magically sync between the two. Dropbox is the only way I've been able to make two computers really work well together. (Should be clear -- this is for documents, not for email -- stick with IMAP for email!)
posted by rdn at 7:56 PM on January 17, 2013

You can also upgrade the imac to the latest version and get icloud set up to sync documents. I have them both installed, but I prefer dropbox myself.
posted by empath at 8:16 PM on January 17, 2013

Response by poster: Cool, yeah, I will be updating the imac to ML ASAP. After that, I'll install dropbox and get IMAP working to handle the email issues.

Thanks y'all!
posted by broadway bill at 8:20 PM on January 17, 2013