Live Blueprints Review: Time Capsule

Today at Live Blueprints we are taking a look the Apple Time Capsule. It was released a short while ago that allows homes to easily manage a centralized server. It has a huge 1TB hard drive and wireless connectivity. We take a look and see how it performs.

At its most basic level, the Apple Time Capsule is just an AirPort Extreme with a hard drive built in. It is aimed at the general consumer market, to easily allow people to have a centralized server (for their multimedia, personal files, and well - anything).

It has wireless support (via 802.11n) and of course can be wired up to your network with an ethernet cable.

The name, to me anyway, is a bit of an unwise marketing decision. If someone had told me it was just called a Time Capsule, I would guess it was for archiving important data. Although while it can (and is) used for this, it can also be used for files used daily.

It transfers files, over 802.11n at just over 50Mbps (802.11g is far slower - in the 8Mbps range).

Like the iPod boxes, the main “outer” box slides off to reveal the inner.

Like most Apple products, even the box is nicely designed. Inside you find the Time Capsule itself, regulatory information, a power cable, setup disk, setup booklet and a “The Need-to-Knows of Backing up” guide.

The Time Capsule is of a glossy plastic. When out of the box it is heavier than it looks (weighing in at around 3.5 pounds - so nothing drastic though).

The Apple Time Capsule is compatible with Max OS X 10.4 or later, Windows Vista and Windows XP SP2. It has a built in firewall, built in print server (so you can just add a USB printer direct to the Time Capsule) and four Ethernet ports.

The USB drive used for the print can also be used for an additional storage device (Such as a hard drive).

When plugging it in for the first time it is a very simple process. It connects to your current network easily. Once the installation CD has run, you can execute the Airport utility. This is where you can configure the Time Capsule (including setting up WPA/WPA2 security).

Once the Time Capsule shows up you can easily and quickly transfer files. For small files the transfer rate is almost the same as if it was a local hard drive. For larger files (100MB+) it is slower. We backed up a couple of GB and it took about an hour to transfer.

The Time Capsule is a very simple to use bit of (expensive) hardware. It has great support for Macs (unsuprisingly), and fast transfer speeds. When plugged in the noise from it is very minimal (and unless you have a fanless computer, much more quieter than your PC). The biggest disadvantage? Price. At around $490 it isn’t cheap…