Time Capsule takes Mac storage a few steps forward

INBOX:MAC FANS have for a while enjoyed a dedicated Apple product for backing up all their documents and photos. Apple's Time Capsule is a sleek looking thing that could sit in the corner of a room and wirelessly back up your hard drive. But there were a few headaches – so is the updated version worth your time and the above-average price tag?

In case you didn’t know, the Time Capsule is a standard Apple wireless router bolted onto a hard disk, turning it into a network storage system.

It’s mainly designed for use with the Time Machine backup software that’s built into Mac’s OS X 10.5, but since it uses Wi-Fi wireless technology, it can be used with older Macs and even Windows PCs. It comes in a 500GB version and a 1TB model.

Although looking like the Airport router, the built-in hard disk makes it slightly larger, as does the built-in AC adaptor brick, but it’s a lot more compact and neat than the average wireless router and the hard disk is virtually silent.

As well as its wireless capabilities, it has three gigabit ethernet ports for normal wired networking and a USB 2.0 port for connecting a printer or another USB hard disk to add extra storage.

A fourth ethernet port connects an ADSL or cable modem or existing network router, since there is no included modem, meaning you still have to plug the Time Capsule into a separate device. That aside, the new Time Capsule now has “simultaneous dual-band” capability. This means it can connect to other wireless devices using the 2.4GHz frequency band used by normal 802.11b/g devices and the 5GHz band used by the faster 802.11a standard.

The new, faster 802.11n can operate in either band. The original Time Capsule could do this, but only use one band at a time which would mean having to faff around if you needed to connect devices which used different bands. In practical terms, for instance, you could set up a newer MacBook and a trusty old PowerBook which uses the older wireless standard of 802.11g.

Other than that, Mac and Windows versions of Apple’s Airport Utility configuration software are included on the CD-Rom and once installed, it automatically detects the Time Capsule. This guides you through the process in a straightforward manner. The Airport Utility will also run perfectly well on a PC.

To give you an idea of how it works, it takes about 10 minutes to transfer 1GB of data onto the Time Capsule wirelessly using the older 802.11g connection and about six minutes over 802.11n.

Apple’s manual advises you leave your machine running overnight the first time you use Time Machine to perform a backup on to the Time Capsule. The 500GB model (€269) will suit most users and you can add a cheap USB hard disk if you need extra storage. At €449, the 1TB model seems overpriced.