I'm using .mac for the same reason. I also have some power issues in our neighborhood that takes my email/sites down and has caused me issues in the past. Now, if my power isout, I still get my emails.
The onyl thing I would recommend is that Apple make .mac more of a "portal" style site, rather than one-off page by page templates.
Heck, if they just took something like Xoops and integrated Gallery (to work with photos and video). it would probably satisfy 99.9% of what people want.