Customer Reviews
Great Product and a snap to use 
2008-05-09
The Apple Time Capsule is absolutely the easiest way that anyone can perform regular backups on their computer. You don't even know it is happening, it is that simple. Once you have everything setup and are using the Time Capsule as your backup device, Leopard just takes care of the rest. Just an amazingly simple product and one that I would highly recommend to even the novice of users.
Solid once you get it setup 
2008-05-06
Took several attempts to get this product properly working. I stared at the amber light and battled the configuration for a couple of hours. I expected more from a Mac product but since I did this in a work environment I am assuming it is much easier in a home that has no existing network.
Once I got the green light and it started connecting with time machine, it's been solid ever since.
Worst Apple product ever? Even worse than the hockey puck mouse? Yes. 
2008-04-27
The Time Capsule is a great-sounding product on paper. Wireless backups to a centralised hard drive, and automated too? Yes, please. Let's take all the hassle and even all the thought out of backing up data. Wonderful idea.
Wonderful idea, yes. Terrible implementation. The first backup took more than three days of wrestling with esoteric error messages, inexplicable hangs and stutters, and just plain weird behaviour on the part of the Time Capsule. After seriously considering sending the product back then and there, the initial backup finally succeeded.
All was smooth sailing for about a month and a half. Until yesterday. Now, backups fail to even begin, the thoroughly unhelpful error messages have returned, and Time Machine will not even launch. I have six weeks' worth of backup data on the Time Capsule which I cannot even access, and no further backups will go through. So basically, I have paid $300 for a more expensive version of the Airport Extreme, for all the functionality it has now.
Steer well clear of this product. It may sound like a good concept, and it is, but its actual performance is sketchy at best, catastrophic at worst. Spend your money elsewhere on backup solutions which actually do "just work".
It works! 2008-04-17
I've always viewed backing up data as necessary, but a big pain in the neck--especially with a laptop. Prior to Time Machine, backing up my drive necessitated physically connecting my computer to a backup drive, turning off power management and leaving the computer to copy everything overnight. With this device, the biggest pain was the first backup--subsequent to that, I don't need to fiddle with even thinking about backing up--the computer does it for me! Once again, Apple reinvents a better wheel.
Mediocre product 2008-04-17
It doesn't belong to the lineup of Apple products.
Never try to use it as a client of your wirelees network. Even if you have an "n standart" router you'll have a hard time establishing the internet connection. Once you succeed you could spend 2 solid days (48 hours )to initially backup a 60GB drive with time machine, even if you hard wired the capsule to the computer. I experienced 8 connection drops on a wireless mode after everything was setup and this delayed the incremental backups.
Don't forget to set your hard drive to be on all the time . If it goes to sleep you won't backup anything until you operate the computer again.
Now if you use the time capsule as a primary wireless router then be prepared to have a very slow connection beyond 30 feet(below g speed). So it is a poor experience at that.
Of course I won't go into the disaster scenario i.e. the router goes bad or most likely the hard drive does and then you are out of luck : No router and no backup unless you had mirrored time capsule unto another external drive.
Conclusion: I returned mine and went with the new Netgear readynas duo. For $500 you get 1 TB of a well designed NAS storage. More on that separately.
To finish, forget about seeking Apple technical support. When thay cannot help you then " you must have another faulty piece of equipment in your network" . Let alone that my sytem worked like a charm before time capsule was attached, and after I eliminated it from the network. Of course it is never Apple's fault!
The Time is not right for Time Capsule yet 2008-04-13
Introducing Time Capsule. Automatic wireless backup for your Mac. Time Capsule is a revolutionary backup device that works wirelessly with Time Machine in Mac OS X Leopard. It automatically backs up everything, so you no longer have to worry about losing your digital life. Time Capsule is also a full-featured 802.11n Wi-Fi base station. Every computer in your house can work off a wireless network at blazing speeds. And they can back up wirelessly to the same Time Capsule.
false Apple advertising 
2008-04-09
First, let me say that I've been using Apple products for more than 15 years, all as a professional graphics designer. No fun and games, just serious work. I know my way around the Mac OS. With all my years of experience, however, I was stumped with TC, and am now very disappointed that I bought it.
My most important complaint is that it DOES NOT work entirely as advertised. According to Apple, you can use it as a base station/backup drive, or as a client to an established wireless network, or just hardwired directly to your computer. I intended to use option #2: as a client to my established network. Why? Because I'm happy with the wireless service I have, I wanted to create a network and back up more than one computer to the TC, and I wanted to plug it into a power strip with my main computer and turn it off at the end of the day.
This option was discussed on the Apple Web site, and it is also fully described in the TC owners manual (pages 17 to 19); there's even a diagram illustrating how to do this.
However, when I tried doing it, it would not work. The procedure even kept knocking out my established network. (I had to keep unplugging my modem and router to get them to reboot.)
I called Apple, waited close to half an hour on the phone, and was finally helped. The tech agent, who was very friendly, helped me configure TC to act as a base station/backup drive. It worked, I was happy, and hung up the phone. I then realized that this was exactly what I DID NOT want to do with it.
I called again, waited another half hour, and was helped by a tech who was far from friendly and was not very communicative. (The Apple techs are usually very friendly and helpful.) I told him the problem, and he informed me that Apple was no longer supporting TC if it is used as a client to an established network. I told him that this is how it was advertised and even described in the owners manual. He said that he was aware of all this. When I asked why here was this change, he just grunted that "there might be 'issues.'" So, he helped me configure it as a simple hard drive to my main computer. What a waste of $300!
Anyway, TC stopped working, I called again, waited another half hour, got another friendly tech, who this time passed me on to the TC expert tech. He confirmed that Apple had indeed changed it's mind about how to configure TC. He did solve my problem and it's now working fine. It's wired directly to my main office computer, so the other computers are not networked to the TC. I'm pretty sure I could have done this with a less expensive backup drive, and certainly not wasted hours getting it to work and on the phone with Apple tech people.
Chalk TC up with the intro of OS 10.5, which was also pretty much of a flop. I'm now in the camp with many other longtime Mac users who believe Apple is more interested in selling phones, televisions, and iTunes than in designing top-flight computer gear.
Great idea, but.. 2008-04-05
Time capsule is a great idea -- always-on backup, networking, all in a beautiful box. I've had nothing but problems. Took me a while to realize my anti-virus software was slowing the first backup to a crawl, and then dropping the connection. There are problems with OSX 10.5.2 and the Time Capsule's wifi -- the Mac is alway searching for a good connection, and it's not very fast. I have been unable to get the mac to recognize the printer on the TC, and the PC on the network can't either. About half the time, the hourly backup fails.
Good idea, but I'll go back to a hard disk that I'll try to remember to plug in for backup, and maybe try this again in a year or so when the bugs are worked out.
Works great once you get it going. 
2008-04-04
After waiting a month or so for it to arrive, I finally got to try it out. Out of the box, it worked fine with my current AirPort Express setup (I originally tried TC as a client). But software said a Firmware update was available, which I ran. It didn't come back on-line. After about 30 minutes of trying everything and resetting it a dozen times, I decided to remove the AirPort Express from the network and put new TC in its place. Worked great after that. Don't know if I will need the 2nd station for WDS or not - because range seems fine right now.
Network speeds are fast. Disk is easy to write to. Acts just like any other hard disk, protectable by password. I am not using as back up exactly, but more like file server and base station.
Very elegant design and love the fact that I can plug in hub for multiple printers, as well as additional USB hard drive.
Great Product! 2008-03-30
Got this as a replacement for an older Linksys router and to use automatic backups with Time Machine. Works perfectly! Setup is easy if the instructions are followed exactly. One thing that I had to do was to reset my cable modem after setup like the instructions say. After I did that I was up and running. I was a little hesitant to buy at first, reading a lot of negative reviews, but I think the key is to follow the instructions. All of my laptops and my network printer are working great with this router. I have two Macbooks and one laptop running Vista and one running XP. I also have the Wii console working with this. All were easy to configure and work well. The backups are also easy. The first backup takes awhile so do it overnight. A little pricey but It works very well.
