Time Capsule - 500 GB
Apple
- MB276LL/A
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Reviews
(14)
0
have been using the 1T version for awhile with the firmware update with both Leopard & Vista, here is my impression:
(+) cool design. no power brick. run silent.
(+) works well with Time Machine, wireless data streaming with "n", network printer.
(+) works very well with VISTA.
(-) can run very hot, especially if copying files & running continuously. gets hotter the longer it runs.
(-) TM back up is slow both wire & wireless. first back-up of 30G took literally more than one day. took it to Genius bar --> nothing wrong . . . . incremental back-ups are faster.
(-) TM back-up utility is questionable because: (1) slower than normal copying, (2) takes up more space, (3) who needs hourly back-up, (4) no catastrophic corruption with Leopard (or Vista for that matter).
(-) throttles internet speed.
*** because of the (-) and my network-enabled printer, i now mainly use it as a wireless back-up hard drive and for streaming video/music and only turn it on when need to.
i used Winclone &
(+) cool design. no power brick. run silent.
(+) works well with Time Machine, wireless data streaming with "n", network printer.
(+) works very well with VISTA.
(-) can run very hot, especially if copying files & running continuously. gets hotter the longer it runs.
(-) TM back up is slow both wire & wireless. first back-up of 30G took literally more than one day. took it to Genius bar --> nothing wrong . . . . incremental back-ups are faster.
(-) TM back-up utility is questionable because: (1) slower than normal copying, (2) takes up more space, (3) who needs hourly back-up, (4) no catastrophic corruption with Leopard (or Vista for that matter).
(-) throttles internet speed.
*** because of the (-) and my network-enabled printer, i now mainly use it as a wireless back-up hard drive and for streaming video/music and only turn it on when need to.
i used Winclone &
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9 price(s)
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I tried this Time Capsule out for about 25 days and, in that time, observed several key flaws that ultimately led to my return of the item. While the routing functions worked flawlessly for my application, the internal drive did not. Using a gigabit connection, the maximum throughput to and from the drive was dismal at around 8MB/s and 15MB/s, respectively. More importantly, as a primary backup device, the drive became corrupted on two occasions requiring a reformat each time. As the drive cannot be connected directly to my MacBook by USB, I could not use disk-utility to repair the drive and potentially save the data on it. An Airport Extreme with a 500GB USB drive attached was able to attain a throughput of 10MB/s and 19MB/s, respectively.
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First, I'm a hardcore Apple fan and have used Macs from the LC days (last century!), so don't get me wrong on this.
I regret my purchase of Time Capsule. Seriously. And if I had a way of returning it (I'm 12,563 km away from the NY Apple Store where it was purchased), I would.
The TC's size is LARGE, larger than the footprint (Al base) of an iMac 20", and it's heavy. Given today's HD form factors, I was expecting something much smaller. In fact, look at how Apple has shrunk the new Aiport Extreme base stations.
Setup with Leopard and Time Machine isn't difficult, but it's not the fabled Apple kind of easy. WiFi and internet were up after a couple of attempts and one hardware reset. The initial backup... ah! there lies the rub...
I did it the logical ethernet way (Apple should have warned newbies about this), and believe me, I would not like to repeat the process. 1st attempt: 24 hours+, and a defective backup (for only 80 GB!); 2nd attempt (after firmware upgrade, sw update), 6 hours,
I regret my purchase of Time Capsule. Seriously. And if I had a way of returning it (I'm 12,563 km away from the NY Apple Store where it was purchased), I would.
The TC's size is LARGE, larger than the footprint (Al base) of an iMac 20", and it's heavy. Given today's HD form factors, I was expecting something much smaller. In fact, look at how Apple has shrunk the new Aiport Extreme base stations.
Setup with Leopard and Time Machine isn't difficult, but it's not the fabled Apple kind of easy. WiFi and internet were up after a couple of attempts and one hardware reset. The initial backup... ah! there lies the rub...
I did it the logical ethernet way (Apple should have warned newbies about this), and believe me, I would not like to repeat the process. 1st attempt: 24 hours+, and a defective backup (for only 80 GB!); 2nd attempt (after firmware upgrade, sw update), 6 hours,
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First, let me say that I've been using Apple products for more than 15 years, all as a professional graphics designer. No fun and games, just serious work. I know my way around the Mac OS. With all my years of experience, however, I was stumped with TC, and am now very disappointed that I bought it.
My most important complaint is that it DOES NOT work entirely as advertised. According to Apple, you can use it as a base station/backup drive, or as a client to an established wireless network, or just hardwired directly to your computer. I intended to use option #2: as a client to my established network. Why? Because I'm happy with the wireless service I have, I wanted to create a network and back up more than one computer to the TC, and I wanted to plug it into a power strip with my main computer and turn it off at the end of the day.
This option was discussed on the Apple Web site, and it is also fully described in the TC owners manual (pages 17 to 19); there's even a diagram illustrating
My most important complaint is that it DOES NOT work entirely as advertised. According to Apple, you can use it as a base station/backup drive, or as a client to an established wireless network, or just hardwired directly to your computer. I intended to use option #2: as a client to my established network. Why? Because I'm happy with the wireless service I have, I wanted to create a network and back up more than one computer to the TC, and I wanted to plug it into a power strip with my main computer and turn it off at the end of the day.
This option was discussed on the Apple Web site, and it is also fully described in the TC owners manual (pages 17 to 19); there's even a diagram illustrating
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Time capsule is a great idea -- always-on backup, networking, all in a beautiful box. I've had nothing but problems. Took me a while to realize my anti-virus software was slowing the first backup to a crawl, and then dropping the connection. There are problems with OSX 10.5.2 and the Time Capsule's wifi -- the Mac is alway searching for a good connection, and it's not very fast. I have been unable to get the mac to recognize the printer on the TC, and the PC on the network can't either. About half the time, the hourly backup fails.
Good idea, but I'll go back to a hard disk that I'll try to remember to plug in for backup, and maybe try this again in a year or so when the bugs are worked out.
Good idea, but I'll go back to a hard disk that I'll try to remember to plug in for backup, and maybe try this again in a year or so when the bugs are worked out.
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After waiting a month or so for it to arrive, I finally got to try it out. Out of the box, it worked fine with my current AirPort Express setup (I originally tried TC as a client). But software said a Firmware update was available, which I ran. It didn't come back on-line. After about 30 minutes of trying everything and resetting it a dozen times, I decided to remove the AirPort Express from the network and put new TC in its place. Worked great after that. Don't know if I will need the 2nd station for WDS or not - because range seems fine right now.
Network speeds are fast. Disk is easy to write to. Acts just like any other hard disk, protectable by password. I am not using as back up exactly, but more like file server and base station.
Very elegant design and love the fact that I can plug in hub for multiple printers, as well as additional USB hard drive.
Network speeds are fast. Disk is easy to write to. Acts just like any other hard disk, protectable by password. I am not using as back up exactly, but more like file server and base station.
Very elegant design and love the fact that I can plug in hub for multiple printers, as well as additional USB hard drive.
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Got this as a replacement for an older Linksys router and to use automatic backups with Time Machine. Works perfectly! Setup is easy if the instructions are followed exactly. One thing that I had to do was to reset my cable modem after setup like the instructions say. After I did that I was up and running. I was a little hesitant to buy at first, reading a lot of negative reviews, but I think the key is to follow the instructions. All of my laptops and my network printer are working great with this router. I have two Macbooks and one laptop running Vista and one running XP. I also have the Wii console working with this. All were easy to configure and work well. The backups are also easy. The first backup takes awhile so do it overnight. A little pricey but It works very well.
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Im a new apple convert. I just purchased a macbook for my wife about a month ago. I finally got fed up with windows. My Linksys router which is a wireless B router is tired, and failing. So I decided since I bought my wife a new laptop, and I will be buying an imac soon, I would splurge and get the Time Capsule. I dreaded the networking nightmare on getting the macbook, my current xp box, 2 usb printers, an external hard drive, and ipod.
To my surprise it didnt take long at all to set this up. I started with just plugging up the time capsule directly to the macbook. Setup was a breeze. I then plugged up the windows box. It also was a breeze as it was simply going to ethernet. I did have problems with the two usb printers though. They worked fine printing through a usb hub connected to the windows box, but I couldnt get it to work on the macbook. I simply reinstalled the drivers in the macbook and it worked. I also have an external hard drive as well as an ipod hooked into
To my surprise it didnt take long at all to set this up. I started with just plugging up the time capsule directly to the macbook. Setup was a breeze. I then plugged up the windows box. It also was a breeze as it was simply going to ethernet. I did have problems with the two usb printers though. They worked fine printing through a usb hub connected to the windows box, but I couldnt get it to work on the macbook. I simply reinstalled the drivers in the macbook and it worked. I also have an external hard drive as well as an ipod hooked into
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It's easy, wireless backup of all your Macs running Leopard. Yep. My only complaints are with speed - you may be able to convince me this is because it's taking it's time making sure the backup is done properly. Whatever. Anyway, I would certainly recommend this to people running multiple Macs. The good and bad:
Pros:
EASY - I followed the default settings from the setup assistant and was up and running in 5 minutes.
Syncing with my Apple TV and copying files via "n" wireless was great, about 9MB/sec. My "g" router was about 2.6MB/sec.
Cons:
Some Speed issues -
File copying via gigabit Ethernet was slow too - 12MB/sec through Time Capsule vs 25MB/sec when my MacBook was directly connected to my Mac Pro.
Backups via gigabit Ethernet were slow to - about 5 MB/sec. Maybe the Time Capsule was doing other things to ensure my backup was properly done, don't know.
Wireless backups from laptops do work except I was disappointed to discover it only backs up when the laptop is plugged in. Not a
Pros:
EASY - I followed the default settings from the setup assistant and was up and running in 5 minutes.
Syncing with my Apple TV and copying files via "n" wireless was great, about 9MB/sec. My "g" router was about 2.6MB/sec.
Cons:
Some Speed issues -
File copying via gigabit Ethernet was slow too - 12MB/sec through Time Capsule vs 25MB/sec when my MacBook was directly connected to my Mac Pro.
Backups via gigabit Ethernet were slow to - about 5 MB/sec. Maybe the Time Capsule was doing other things to ensure my backup was properly done, don't know.
Wireless backups from laptops do work except I was disappointed to discover it only backs up when the laptop is plugged in. Not a
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I have had Time Capsule for only 2 days. It took about 10 minutes to set up as a stand-alone router and networked drive. I also tried it alongside my old linksys as a mac-only 802.11n router/drive. Both worked great. I had no problem installing the software on my windows laptops; wifi and everything else works as advertised. The real beauty is Time Machine - for your first back up, turn off your AirPort card and attach an rj-45 cable for the fastest back-ups, after that it backs up your Leopard laptop every hour wirelessly, almost no speed degradation when the back-up happens. Wonderful product, highly recommend. Just to clarify for some reviewers it is $[...] for the 500GB and $[...] for 1TB.
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If you are about to purchase a time capsule - do your homework. We were excited to have a wireless router, print server and external hardrive all in one and ordered a time capsule direct from Apple as soon as we could.
Getting it to actually work has been a nightmare. The reason we switched from PC to Apple was for the supposed simplicty and intuitiveness of the OS and peripherials. It has been nothing but simple. Yesterday we spent over 5 hours on the phone with Apple ultimately getting directed to the chief technical troubleshooter of time capsule. He had to walk us through numerous manual configurations. He also explained that the name of the time capsule can not exceed 26 characters including the deault "time capsule" that gets attached to any name. I have a long last name and this affected our connectivity for hours.
Thankfully, with the dedication of the technician, the timecapsule worked as advertised -- for a few hours. Since then we have intermittent connectivity and only
Getting it to actually work has been a nightmare. The reason we switched from PC to Apple was for the supposed simplicty and intuitiveness of the OS and peripherials. It has been nothing but simple. Yesterday we spent over 5 hours on the phone with Apple ultimately getting directed to the chief technical troubleshooter of time capsule. He had to walk us through numerous manual configurations. He also explained that the name of the time capsule can not exceed 26 characters including the deault "time capsule" that gets attached to any name. I have a long last name and this affected our connectivity for hours.
Thankfully, with the dedication of the technician, the timecapsule worked as advertised -- for a few hours. Since then we have intermittent connectivity and only
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I am not disappointed with the Time Capsule, but am disappointed with some of the consequences associated with having it. First, let me say that it offers a lot more customization than most people are willing to admit. The network settings and ability to customize your network are just as good if not better than every other router I have owned.
-The USB sharing works like a champ. I am currently sharing two hard drives and a printer from the USB port. I don't like that the drives won't mount to the desktop, but rather just show up like a shared folder. It works though, so I have no real complaint.
-Time Machine works well, although you can't transfer a hard drive with an existing TM backup to the Time Capsule. You have to format and start over, which sucks.
-The TC is a bit noisy, but no more than the quietest hard drives I have used. It is definitely not as noisy as a Lacie or similar.
-As of right now, I cannot connect my XBOX 360 to the TC. I suspect that this is a flaw in
-The USB sharing works like a champ. I am currently sharing two hard drives and a printer from the USB port. I don't like that the drives won't mount to the desktop, but rather just show up like a shared folder. It works though, so I have no real complaint.
-Time Machine works well, although you can't transfer a hard drive with an existing TM backup to the Time Capsule. You have to format and start over, which sucks.
-The TC is a bit noisy, but no more than the quietest hard drives I have used. It is definitely not as noisy as a Lacie or similar.
-As of right now, I cannot connect my XBOX 360 to the TC. I suspect that this is a flaw in
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I've been using Time Machine since I upgraded to Leopard. While Time Machine is great for backing up my iMac, its a pain to have to hook up my Mac Book Pro and new Mac Book Air to an external hard drive. The Time Capsule is great for that. So long as my laptop is open and running, a backup can happen.
Make sure you remember to do your first backup using ethernet. Otherwise it is going to be slow. Apple does not want to bog down your network with backups, so when you are backing up wirelessly, it will intentionally throttle the connection sped.
This device also functions as a wireless router. I was able to remove my previous Air Port Extreme from the network. The large size is nice because you are able to share one large drive and backup several smaller computers. My iMac and laptop all backup just fine.
The device does run a little hot. The Best Way to Backup a Mac Laptop
Make sure you remember to do your first backup using ethernet. Otherwise it is going to be slow. Apple does not want to bog down your network with backups, so when you are backing up wirelessly, it will intentionally throttle the connection sped.
This device also functions as a wireless router. I was able to remove my previous Air Port Extreme from the network. The large size is nice because you are able to share one large drive and backup several smaller computers. My iMac and laptop all backup just fine.
The device does run a little hot. The Best Way to Backup a Mac Laptop
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I'll make this short... I just got my 500GB Time Capsule and, so far, it's been an absolutely outstanding experience. I was already on a wireless network and was a little confused about how well this thing would go in. So, followed the simple instructions that came with the AirPort Setup Utility and, voila, I was talking to the Time Capsule (TC). I decided to stand the TC up as a separate, Apple only wireless network, and to connect (specifically, bridge vs. Double DHCP) the TC up to my existing router. The installation took about five minutes and was absolutely flawless (I now have an Apple-only 802.11n network, and my original 802.11g network for guests). Oh, and did I say the 802.11n wireless is bloody FAST?!
As soon as I specified the TC as my Time Machine backup server, two minutes later the initial backup was cranking away. No false starts, no crazy configuration management or Regedit blah blah blah -- I plugged it in, gave it a couple of key data points, and it was up and
As soon as I specified the TC as my Time Machine backup server, two minutes later the initial backup was cranking away. No false starts, no crazy configuration management or Regedit blah blah blah -- I plugged it in, gave it a couple of key data points, and it was up and
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