Just got my Time Capsule. I like it!

Just picked up a 500GB TC. It was very simple to set up as in bridge mode so my main DSL router and the TC are on the same subnet. Seems to work just great. Can access it in 5ghz N mode with my MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. Transfer speeds seem good, and I'm doing my first Time Machine backup wirelessly which will obviously take a while, but it's not too bad at all! 1.34GB in under 10 minutes. Not shabby!

Haven't connected any printers to it yet, but I'll get round to that at some point.

Anyway, the TC is sexy, and I like it, and that's all that really matters, isn't it? Sexiness > anything else.

 

Sounds good William. My work is looking at getting one for us Mac users. Hopefully we will get the 1TB model as five of us use Macs. If you could write another short review, that would be wonderful!

 

Another review?! Gosh! Demanding, ain't we!?

Fine, fine. I'll get it up this weekend (and I'll also write a TC review )

Patience, my child!

 

Fine, take that attitude and.... well use your imagination! LOL. Thanks appreciate it man! I think I am going to purchase a white MB as my second machine. Two MBP seems a little redundant. I really like the MBA, but I need the optical drive and ports.

 

If you have a MBP, I wouldn't bother getting a MB. The screen is a huge downgrade from the MBP's LED display. I'd get a MBA, since it's a stunning second system (with a stunning LED 13.3"). The MB really isn't much smaller than the MBP! Even their weight is so similar! 5lbs vs 5.4lbs! Seriously, get a MBA, the Superdrive, and a little USB hub if you need more ports. I LOVE the MacBook Air.

 

If only the mb had been upgraded to an led and a little bit more lbs shaved off I'd jump to get one!! I'm hoping to see your review on the 1tb as well!

Also williamG the 17" hi res model... I'm absolutely in LOVE with it!! =D

 

cong!me want one too...

 

Glad you like it William. However, by the time I spend $1700 on the MBA, then $100 on the superdrive, I might as well have bought another MBP. The only reason I would do that is to play the occasional game, and I already have an uber desktop for that.

 

I don't buy that logic.

You're comparing the systems as if they are equal. The MacBook Air is a very unique system, very unlike the MB or MBPs. I could build two very powerful desktop computers for the price of the MBA. But that's not the point, is it?

 

Where are the doggy vs machine pics? someone's getting sloppy...

 

William, your not paying attention. If you read my post, what I was trying to say is that for my own needs, I would rather spend $1800 on another MBP then on the MBA. Yes, the MBA is indeed unique, however it caters to a very specific market of users. I am glad that you like the one you currently have in your possession, however it is not for me. I don't like the fact that the battery is non user replaceable. I don't like the fact that the largest HDD capacity is 80 gigs or that it is 4200 instead of 5400 or 7200, and I also would rather spend my money on something that is more future proof than the Air. I am not saying the Air will not be able to run newer versions of OSX or other programs, however a penyrn equipped MB or MBP is going to have better longevity in my estimation that the Air.

IF I had $1800 dollars to spend, it would not be on the Air. With the budget I have set out for myself the MB will do nicely. Sure the build quality of the Air is better, it has a LED backlit display, and the keyboard lights up. Those are all nice features. In the end though, I really don't need them. When Apple decides to include an optical drive of some sort and increases the storage capacity of the Air, then maybe I will jump on the band wagon. It is the first rev of a great product, but first revs have room for improvement. I know my iPhone sure does.

 

r0k's (unofficial) .5 TB Time Capsule mini review:

1 - unboxing - oops - I was in a bit of a hurry to use it. Anybody want an empty box pic? (see below)

2 - setup - I was very impressed with airport utility. here is how it went:
I had a netgear router which I was dying to replace because of random issues I've experienced with it over the years. I plugged in the TC and ran the airport utility on my MB and it found it immediately. I wasn't ready to deal with it so I turned it back off again and decided to come back later.

When later rolled around, I plugged the TC in and let it get a dhcp address from my netgear router on its WAN port. Airport utility was willing to let me use my TC in "bridged" mode which meant I could use it as a second access point and keep my netgear as my primary router. Not something I was interested in. Anybody want to buy a netgear 802.11n router? It's destined for ebay. It "works" up to Netgear's specs, but Netgear's definition of works is a little different than my definition of works. Specifically, you can't filter internet by keyword and be able to upload at the same time Granted, you can't do this on the TC at all but at least Apple didn't lie to us and say you could.

I suppose I could have simply plugged in my TC and my MB could find it wirelessly and set it up. This is important if you want to put a TC between the walls (in a wall safe that isn't also a faraday cage) and run nothing to it but power. Sort of a Cheyenne Mountain approach to backup.

You can pick "create a wireless network" (like any off the shelf router) "participate in a wds network" and "extend a wireless network". I would expect the third choice to act like an access point and you could connect wired devices to the ports on the TC and they would get their network traffic wirelessly. Something like this: net-->your router-->wifi-->TC-->wired devices.

My approach was this: net-->TC-->wired and wireless devices. I'm not elated that a choice exists in Airport utility to allow the TC to share its drive on the raw 'net. To me that is too much like leaving a fresh baked apple pie on the window sill.

My intent was to replace the netgear so I unplugged the netgear, plugged the WAN port of the TC to my Motorola Cable modem and took all the wires that had been going to my netgear router and plugged them into the TC and picked "create a wireless network". I got 10.0.0.1. I didn't like 10.0.0.1. I like 192.something. I looked around for the setting and found it pretty easily. I had 192.something working right away. Next came WPA. I got that working right away. I should mention that I disabled the airport on my MB and used gigabit ethernet to do all the setup as I had been conditioned to do after years of dealing with those other brands. I bet I could have gotten away with doing everything wirelessly if I had wanted to. One thing I should mention is I hit "manual setup" rather than "continue" but I did use the wizard the first time. I prefer the manual setup route. In manual, you get 5 categories averaging 3-4 tabs each: Airport (summary/timecapsule/wireless/access), Internet (connection/dhcp/nat), Printers(I'm planning to add a .5TB usb drive), Disks(disks/filesharing), Advanced(logging&snmp/portmapping/ipv6).

If you want to use a wifi printer, you might need the passphrase or you might need the hex id. You can go to Base Station->Equivalent Network Password if you want 60+ characters of hex gobbledegook to use for your WEP or WPA key. I never got my HP psc 2510 to work with WPA so I moved it and use a wire. I put my brother wifi printer where the HP used to be and the brother figured it all out on the first try. To set up wireless printers, you need to run a wire to them to do the settings from a web browser then when you unplug the ethernet the wifi wakes up and if it works, (on some printers) the blue light comes on and you are good to go. If you have an HP, may God have mercy on your soul.

Here's another good thing. You can have timed access by mac address. Yes, it's another available level of protection in my parental control scheme.

3 - time machine backups - click on it. it works. yes, you can share one TC between several machines. Ours is being shared between 3 of our 4 macs and I will soon add the 4th. One backup set is 70 gig, another is 40 gig and the 3rd is 30 gig. I'm a little annoyed that whenever I plug in my old usb drive, time machine goes running to it despite the fact it can still see my TC. This means I will have to take more drastic measures to stop it from trying to use my usb drive. My current plan is to move the usb drive away from my MB usb port and connect it to the TC to use as a network drive. Apple claims you can't use an attached usb drive for backup but there was an OS X update that cleared the way for airdisks, I wonder if it cleared the way to use external usb drives as a backup destination on time capsule? No matter, I prefer to dedicate the internal TC drive for backup anyway.

4 - Speed - I'm satisfied.


5 - Unboxing (huh?)
I didn't bother to take a look at what was on the disk(s). I think it was software for ... ahem ... windows

Would I recommend TC? Well here are some alternatives:
1 - Buffalo Linkstation / iTimemachine (freeware). Do I really want to trust my data to a solution Apple doesn't officially support? PLUS you still need a router (if you don't already own one) Combined cost about the same as the TC.
2 - USB disk / .5 TB $139. A lot cheaper than TC but you have to plug it in. Add the router and the combined cost is only $60 less than a TC and you are dealing with plugging stuff in to do your backup only on the one machine you're plugged in to.

If you already have a router that you like, you still get something you could use. The ability to either 1) add a second wired network to your wireless network or 2) bury the time capsule inside a wall where it isn't easily found and let it sit there and back everything up.

Worth it. Well worth it.

(My apologies to William for this...)

Ultimate Verdict: Smaller and less destructive than a black lab.

 

Thanks for the review! After using it some more today, I'm just curious why mine spins up randomly, even when Time Machine isn't accessing it...

I checked the logs and found this:



Not sure what it means, but that's the time it was accessed and I don't get why the drive spun up. It spun up and spun down and then spun up 5 minutes later! Weird, huh?

 

Hmmm.... Strange... My logs are full of key rotations... and a bunch of port 5353 udp accesses... That bonjour thing sure is chatty! I wonder if Airport Utility is going out checking it every so often. I used Time Machine with a usb drive and I swore it was going to fail the drive because it was spinning up every few minutes (it seemed). I'm very tempted to use timemachine editor (freeware) to limit time machine to 4 hour intervals. Hard drives like to sleep, not get scanned every 5 minutes which of course means they never get to sleep unless you set the sleep time to something like 30 seconds. My time capsule is out of earshot so I can't tell if it's being pounded between backups. I gotta remember to give it a listen the next time I'm in that room.

 

Well mine seems to behaving now. Not sure how long that will last, of course. Good thing I can check the logs!

I used a 3rd party application called Time Machine Editor, and set it to 4 hour intervals. The thought of ANY hard drive spinning up and down and up and down every hour is sick!

Here's the result!

If your system is on 24/7, this means: Once every hour = 24 times a day, which means 168 times a week which means 672 times a month!! Sick!!! Sick I say!

Only issue I have is that I set Time Machine Editor to 4 hours, and it's backing up ever 3 hours now. None of this makes sense to me, of course.

 

Whoa, why is your comcast speed for download so slow?? here's mine but your upload is a bit faster than mine, I hate comcast...



Thanks for the review though.

 

I think time machine needs to be rethought. First of all, it should work with any media any time. Buffalo linkstation, usb drive, time capsule internal or external drive. Second of all, it should be activity based. It should not perform a backup if nobody is tickling the ivories. If I ain't typin', changes are nothing's happening on my machine that I care about and want backed up. If I start a huge iphoto import or imovie task, I'm content to let the backup happen at some point after I return. Preferably after I return and then leave again. Like 15 minutes after the last keystroke, time machine kicks in. 45 minutes after the last keystroke time machine goes offline until somebody makes some changes to the local filesystem. I agree with you, a drive that spins all the time day and night requires special hardware designed for 5 nines uptime. I ain't got the money for that sort of thing. I'm pretty sure time machine editor is running some shell scripts to make it's changes. This means I should be able to set up a cron job to enable time machine at 1am and disable it at 3am. The down side is doing a backup once a day means it takes longer to finish. I wouldn't mind it happening hourly when I'm sitting here but I guess I can't have it both ways : pout: .

 

I agree Time Machine isn't perfect. I feel at some point Apple will "officially" let us change our intervals, maybe?

Speaking of wifi and all that jazz, I'm thinking of getting an Airport Express, and connecting my little iPod dock (Logitech MM50 with 3.5mm out) to the Express. What cable is it that I need?

 

Not 100% sure but it looks like you need a 3.5 mm male to 3.5 mm male connector. A radio shack item. Some have expressed that the cheap dac in the express makes the monster audio cables overkill. OTOH if you use optical it's another matter.

 

At 6 am when everybody else is sleep, mine is fine

And it's even better if I use Chicago instead of the local guys...

 

I want to really thank you for your review of TC - it's assuaging the few concerns I have about getting on.

I do have a question: can you, at some point, test to see if you can attach a USB hub to the USB port of TC, and add your printer and a hard drive through the hub? I'm looking to get rid of my current file server and move to USB devices (moving across the continent, and want to move to smaller/easier to move devices) exclusively.

Also, did you run into any problems when/if you had multiple people trying to printer at the same time to the printer connected to TC?

Again, thanks for the review!

 

I thought about doing just that but decided that if it would work, Apple would probably make a big deal about it. I will try to take a look when I get back in town Sunday evening. I'm sure I've got an unpowered hub lying around somewhere. I'd like to put two drives on the thing and verify that I can see both of them. I really don't have a usb printer lying around as my mac compatible printers are all ethernet or wifi.

 

Yeah those Monster cables are a total rip-off.

 

I think I figured out why the drive keeps accessing. If you let it run auto backups, there's no issue. I manually ENTERED Time Machine (to find some files) and it mounted the "volume" on the desktop as it normally does when it actually backs up, but after exiting Time Machine, the volume does NOT get ejected as it does when you auto-run the backup. You must make sure to eject the volume if you actually enter Time Machine manually.

That make sense?

 

I remember reading, somewhere, that it was a part of TC. Unfortunately I haven't read any reviewer having tested this

 

I have had my Time Capsule now for two weeks. While I love the easy set up and its fairly robust Wi-Fi, TC does exhibit relatively slow "n" performance. I have not actually measured my transfer speed, but if someone wants to outline the steps and tools involved, perhaps we can all post our transfer times here, using the same methodology.

Thanks!

 

Yeah N is a bit of a joke. Honestly. I'm in the next room over from my TC in N 5ghz mode. Less than 25 feet away from the unit. Let's do a transfer from my MacBook Pro to the TC.

Hovering around 3.3 MB/s on a 350MB file. Sometimes less. Wow. Amazing. Not. Where's the blistering speed N is supposed to offer? It doesn't exist.

What's interesting is that transferring FROM the TC to my MacBook Pro are much faster. I mean WAY faster. Getting 7-7.5MB/s copying from the TC to my MBP. So what's going on here? Why are its write speeds so slow?

 

I have a couple of LAME-O slowpoke 802.11g devices and I set my network up for "compatability" so I'm not expecting blazing speed. I plugged in gigabit ethernet for my initial Time Capsule/Time Machine backup. Incrementals are fine over 802.11. The kids' initial backups took many hours from their bedrooms which are about 50 feet from the TC. They have Minis which have 802.11n but the slowpoke device is the wifi (802.11 b/g) printer that sits between their bedrooms in the upstairs hallway.

 

I just switched to 5GHz and discovered that my Sony TZ is not "n" compliant. It could not see the TC. But I did quickly confirm on the MacBook Air that n only is indeed much faster. Now, I have to either get rid of the TZ or upgrade. Hmpf.

 

Yep, N only on my MBA works great.

By the way, my TC definitely smells funny if you stick your nose to it. Pongy! Smells like burning plastic. Tasty!

 

Just smelled mine, no burning plastic here, but then it's only slightly warm. Glad no one could see me do that.

 

Well I say it smells funny, and.... my opinion counts most.... probably?

 

I wonder how it will work with a full recovery. Is the TC detected during the install process? That's one of the features I like most about Time Machine, is teh ability to do a complete restore of my system. It came in very handy when I upgraded my hard drive.

 

I imagine it does, though you probably need to plug it directly into your computer via the ethernet port.

 

I would think it does too, but I'm not too keen to leave my a full restore to the limits of "I imagine it does."

 

Hehe, I agree, but I really do think it does work this way.

Probably not going to get around to a full review this weekend, but I can say it's the best router I've ever used in terms of speed, even without the hard drive in it.

 

Does it still smell burnt?

 

I wouldn't say burnt, but the plastic smells funny. I'm sure they all do.

 

Well, the plastic on my MacBook smells different too, and I love it .

 

Hehe! Nothing wrong with the aromas of Apples, eh?

 

Connected my HP All-in-one PSC 2410 to the USB port on the TC, and was printing in seconds. Very impressive!

 

I just got my TC and it does have the funny smell but I sorta like it. It's like the new car smell but for computer components.

 

I love the smell of a new car!

 

Haha.

Here's a question:

How do you manually assign IPs to devices on the network? I can't seem to be able to do that by MAC address...

 

It's on the Manual Setup->Internet->DHCP tab. DHCP reservations can be made by mac address or dhcp client id.

 

Thanks! Literally was coming back to say I figured it out. The KEY was putting in the DNS servers from my main DSL modem. I had no Internet access otherwise.

Now I have assigned IPs all working great!

 

Alright, pros! I have another question. I just set up my Windows XP computer connected via ethernet to the TC. I have it set to Wake up on LAN. However, it only wakes up via MAC address using this Wakeit program for OS X. If I try to connect via IP address, my computer won't wake up. Any idea why that is? If the system is already on, connecting via IP works just fine. It just won't wake up EXCEPT via MAC address.

Any ideas, experts?