Home > Consumer Reviews > Apple Time Capsule MB276LL/A (AirPort Extreme Plus 500 GB Storage)

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 deal breaker, but a disappointment.

Apple recommends you let the first backup run uninterrupted. Something hard for me to do because I like to fiddle with it as it's running. But it did work as expected, just slower than expected.

It's still the easiest and best backup tool out there. Just do it. (I bought the 1 TB model)

I got this TC (500GB) for testing with my APPLE TV and Windows Laptop.Here are my observations :

1. Installation and Setup was fast. In mins., I could setup my new wireless netowrk.
2. It took me One Restart the Time Capsule to appear as a Network drive on my windows PC. But once connected it is stable.
3. I was able to make my iTunes look at Time Capsule Disk and get music from there. ( I am using Drag and Drop , no import music or no consolidate music)
4. I have not noticed any performance increase in SYNC OPERATION of Apple TV, because iTunes still mediates that process, no way Apple TV sees or works directly with TC. As my desktop is only Wireless G , the speed is unchanged. Even not noticed a difference in internet speed difference. DIFFERENCE is the connection is SOLID in 2 days no restarts.
5. I was able to ERASE the TC and again use it by RENAMING. Worked fine.
6. I was also able to connect my HP 4500C series All in one USB printer to TC and print from my WINDOWS PC wirelessly , no issues.
7. I still have to test the USB hard disk conncetd to TC, for that I need a USB replicator , I will update about this point once I do that.
8. Accessing TC from INTERNET - I tried to do it, and later spoke to Apple Technician, and searched the product HELP - Its possible by Bonjour software BUT we need to have a DYNAMIC IP address , User Id, Password from our Internet Provider ( $$$$$$ ). But this feature is possible, you can publish DISK and PRINTER services and any thing else connected to TC by this service.
9. TC disk format and the DISK format of the additional disks connected to TC : As soon I attached the TC to my laptop ( windows ) , I checked the Preferences of that Drive : Few points here :
a) Its FAT32
b) Not having an option to FORMAT at all. ( only operation is ERASE in 4 different ways )

Which is my concern ..compared to NTFS . File Transfer Speed and the 4GB file size restriction that comes with FAT32.
I called Apple tech - he said we can format TC in NTSF format - but he provided me a case number, to get back to me on how to do it, I do not believe its going to be possible, if so I will update here.

This last point is going to be my KEEP or RETURN factor.

I was convenced with PRICE - when compared with similar disks with Print Services and USB expandability. It appears to be pricy but after looking for alternatives I found this one is CLEAN looking and have all features I am looking for ( ???? disk format type a down side ?? dialama ??? )



-- venu

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.

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 2 time machine back-ups.

Make sure you check the Apple boards and read up on the very large number of experienced Apple users who are having serious problems with the time capsule and are returning them. Apple needs to release a fix or some specific instructions immediately.

Great concept, but BUYER BEWARE.

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 & SuperDuper to back-up my newly installed Leopard & Vista partitions, transferred them to TC, then use TC as my wireless data back-up hard drive.
i know i haven't used TC's full potential. but Apple needs to maximize TC's full potential with either firmware or software upgrades.