Informal review of Apple Time Capsule

[Updated 2010-06-20] 

The Apple Time Capsule is a very nice package that for $300 includes a 500GB Hard Disk (now 1TB or 2 TB), an 802.11n Wireless gateway and router and a USB port where you can hook up either your printer or a hard disk to serve as backup of the internal hard disk.

I have been using this little guy for over a year and it has performed well in several fronts and not so well in others. Here’s my summary of observations, which of course apply to last year’s model.

Highs:

1. Neat 802.11n router, with options for setting up standard things like internal router, gateway, NAT and port forwarding. Additionally it has options for setting up the Time Capsule as a file server either using per user shares / accounts or a global share / device account.
2. Works very well with OS-X either as a File server, a Time Machine backup volume or a Print Server.

Ok:

1. In order to share printer to Windows machines you need to install Apple’s Bonjour for Windows, otherwise Windows will not see the printer attached to the USB port in the Time Capsule.

Lows:

1. SMB Server works with Samba, but does not work reliably with Windows. In fact, with Firmware newer than higher than 7.3.2 it won’t work with windows. Even with Firmware 7.3.2,  connections are often dropped.
2. Transmission speed is between 500KBytes/sec to 1.5 MBytes / sec in the best case, when operating two or three rooms away 20+ feet. This happens in both the SMB server as well as the Appletalk server.

   Note: Probably the new version performs better here as the 802.11n WiFi transmitter is now dual band.

 

Tip: You can buy the Time Capsule refurbished form Apple and you will save yourself $50 and get the same warranty as new.