Home > Consumer Reviews > Time Capsule 1TB-GBR

I finally received my time capsule yesterday, ordered from the main apple store, not from amazon, but I thought I'd share my experience. Having successfully set it up now I can say that it's a nice piece of kit. Apples' trademark minimalism is ever present, the glossy white box makes any surface it sits on look about 500 years old immediately, as do most apple products. Setting up is very easy, plug in the power cable, and ethernet cable from your modem and you can wirelessly set it up once you install the software. There are easy options that carry over the settings from your previous modem, or there are in depth configuration options. I went for the easy options, enabled the Time Capsule as a bridge from my modem, and bob's your uncle, it was up and running in about 5 minutes.

Time Machine wireless backups are not as fast as backing up via USB cable, the initial backup of 40gb took 4 hours, but the hourly backups are discreet, and of course if your computer dies, you'll be thankful that it was at least backing up at all! And the massive amount of storage is a big plus too.

I must point out that like the Airport Extreme Base Station this is not an all in one modem and router device (as I was lead to believe, not apples fault) and you are still required to have an external modem. I am using my previous wireless router, which has a modem, and the setup has worked out fine, the Time Capsule being very high quality is already more reliable than my previous router after only a day.

So another quality product from Apple, aside from little annoyances, like discovering I wouldn't be able to bin the useless old router after all, again not Apples fault, and the slow transfers over wifi, a highly recommended product.

Unlike most Apple hardware Time Capsule has some serious problems - which may account for the weeks of delays in shipping following its announcement.

Setting up the system is complex to say the least. Take a look at the apple.com forums on this. The paper based instructions are inadequate. Be prepared when doing an initial backup wirelessly for it to take days - and I am not exaggerating. It's best to backup first using an ethernet cable although the instructions hardly cover this.

Once it's set up - and note that Apple for some reason do not include a broadband modem so you have to have two boxes for this to work - backups remain slow even using the latest and fastest 'n' protocol. If your existing wireless modem does not support n then you'll need to directly wire TC to it and use TC as the wireless device. Otherwise backup will take even longer. Further, the software performs a backup every hour. I'm finding that it's taking so long to backup incremental changes that backup is running continuously. You cannot change the backup frequency - a major failing.

There's also suggested on the Apple support forums that if TC gets too hot it slows down even more. As it tends to run continuously it will get hot. I've had mine in a room with all the windows open and a fan directed onto it. This is in Northern Ireland where it never gets very hot. If you want to use this in the south of England get an air conditioning unit!

I'm a great fan of Apple but you'd do better to get an external hard disk and use that for periodic backups. The only bright spot is that in the winter I won't need to turn the heating on as the TC will warm any room.

For the moment I'd avoid. Hopefully firmware updates will improve TC - it certainly needs it. As it stands it's simply not fit for purpose - particularly if, like me, you want to back up several machines.

Fantastic device, great idea, but can be a pig to get set-up so that the it works reliably. I use BT Home Hub (BTH) with a Vista SP1 PC and a MacBook running Leopard.

My original idea was to extend my existing wireless network from the BTH and add the Time Capsule (TC) as an extra device that the PC and MAC would connect to... Nope, connection kept dropping out and it was slow. After much faffing, I ended up with:

TC plugged into the BTH via Ethernet
PC plugged into the TC via Ethernet
MAC connecting on 5Ghz Wireless

Works like a dream!

If you are using only one or the other, then the set-up will be easier...

Anyway, excellent device, worth £329 of anyone's money.

Whilst the apple time capsule would appear to be a first class product on initial inspection, there is an extremely high failure rate that occurs on these devices at around 18 months. Just check the apple website for evidence of this... it's not good news