Part II: First Look: Time Capsule, wireless backup

that said, it costs 299$ in US, but it is completely different story in Europe. UK, Poland, few other countries. It costs a bit more. And I can get here, for 299$ indeed a device that does the same thing, but doesn't wear Apple's nametag. This is one of the few things, Apple has to fix. How come, others, like for instance Linksys don't sell stuff in EU with higher pricetag but Apple does ? I don't get it. So for instance, in Poland it is 516$ for the same unit! In UK 199 GBP, which in USD is 400$ !!!!! That's just a rip off, insane rip off in both cases. Consider the fact, that average Polish guy/gal earns a bit less than average American. In case of UK, it is other story. But still, I feel being ripped off by Apple so much, that my hh is a size of mexico. Seriously.

That's a review? More like an overview of Apple's marketing material and spec sheet. I can't believe I had to click through all those pages (and ads) for that!

Our First Look segments are brief walkthroughs for setup and use of products, as well as reviews for minor software.

Our writer is merely giving a user's-eye-view of the setup procedure, so that less-experienced users have sort of a visual walkthrough. It also gives a closer look for those that are considering the device.

So.. When's the fix so the Airport Extreme base station with USB disk works properly with Time Machine?!

No mention that AirPort can't do wireless back-up on HD's connected via USB. Is this really the elephant in the room that no one will talk about?

What pisses me off is I had time machine working with my airport extreme base station with a hard drive connected to it perfect until the last 10.5.2 update which killed that. This isnt fair and apple can kiss my ass for disabling it just to sell Time Capsule's to people that already own a Air Port Extreme. I am not happy at all. Pissed off enough I cancelled my Macbook Pro purchase for the time being.

Wow! That does suck, Apple seems to pull-off such abrupt features with no explanations! What gives?

So.. When's the fix so the Airport Extreme base station with USB disk works properly with Time Machine?!

Easy. You spend $500 on a Time Capsule and BAM! It works!

What no one seems to pick up on is that this is pretty much useless for older equipment that only run on 802.11g networks. Backing up anything but the smallest drives over 11g is too slow to be practical.

Before upgrading my MBP to Leopard I was faced with a HD space dilemma. I was at 97% and didn't have enough free space to make the upgrade, despite trimming back what I could usefully find. So I decided to offload my entire iTunes library to a Mac Mini I'd just brought, and then network mount the iTunes music library back to my MBP when I wanted to play music or sync up to my iPhone. In total that was just over 20GB of data, and the copy to my Mini took about 5 hours!

Given that I had about 107GB used on my MBP before the move, I can make a rough guess what a network copy of my entire drive would have taken ~22 hours!

That's unacceptable. Because although I could have done this over a weekend, the real issue is what happens when you have to restore that data after an HD failure. If it takes ~22 hours to backup, then it's also going to take the same amount of time to restore.

In the end I went for a Western Digital 320GB USB drive. I don't see TimeMachine as being an option for me until all my older systems are retired and everything is running on 802.11n. Unless of cause they give you the option to jack directly into the back of the thing for fast restores.

neondiet, I agree with you that a full wireless backup/restore using older 802.11g would be painful, there is a simple solution.... for your initial Time Machine backup (the big one), plug in your Mac to the Time Capsule using an ethernet cable. Then use wireless for all incremental Time Machine backups. If, someday, you have to restore your mac from Time Capsule, plug it in with an ethernet cable again. Simple. Fast. Easy.

Now if only I could use my Airport Extreme Base Station with external USB Hard Drive for Time Machine backups, the way Apple's marketing literature for Leopard claimed I would be able to! I SPECIFICALLY purchased the AEBS for this purpose! Grumble, growl.