Easy to set-up, even when not using the router/wireless features

I bought this purely for back-ups. I was not interested in the router or wireless features, as I already have devices taking care of those duties on my network. The primary concern for me was being able to back-up my laptops without having to remember to plug-in an external drive. I also wanted to be able to grow the Time Capsule storage by plugging in an external drive to it and back-up to the external disk. Setting up the Time Capsule is a very easy task. I plugged one of the LAN ports (the 3 ports close together) onto my network and launched the AirPort Utility on the laptop. A few clicks later, and I had upgraded the firmware on the Time Capsule and configured it with a static LAN IP address and disabled the WAN/router/wireless capabilities. I was able to run a quick Time Machine test very rapidly. As with a local disk, the first Time Machine back-up takes a long time. I would suggest using a wired gigabit connection rather than doing the first backup over wireless. Subsequent back-ups will have much smaller data churn and can be quickly performed over the air. When an external hard disk is connected to the Time Capsule, the drive appears as possible target for Time Machine in the System Preferences > Time Machine control panel. Sadly, however, I was not able to cleanly merge an existing Time Machine disk with the Time Capsule--plugging in an existing Time Machine disk into the Time Capsule and running a back-up created a new back-up folder on the disk. With some web searching, I found some complex procedures on how to pull off the conversion but it didn't seem worth the trouble to me so I ignored it. The construction is what you'd expect from Apple--solid, sturdy, clean. The power cord is a 2 prong cable, but no Ethernet cable is included--you'll have to bring your own. The 3 LAN ports are gigabit but I haven't done any performance tests with either the switching speed nor the disk I/O speed. My biggest concern in terms of longevity is heat--heat kills disks, and the Time Capsule is a small, fanless system. On the other hand, it's completely silent, even when the disk is actively reading or writing. Although I am not using it, the wireless and router features are the same as any other AirPort product and configured with the same tool. I have a number of AirPort Expresses around the house for iTunes streaming and it is convenient to see all these devices with a single tool. I took off a star because the price for the 500 GB capacity is a bit weak--and adding $200 to get the 1 TB seems very overpriced. If this were $100 less, it would be a 5 star value. However, it was worth it to me as I have some very critical data on my laptop and it wasn't always getting protected when I needed to plug in the external portable drive. For data integrity, it's worth the price, even if the capacity is a bit low.