Sunday, 9 March 2008

Our Tech: Apple Time Capsule (500GB)

Welcome to the inaugural episode of our second series, 'Our Tech', contributed to by all members of the TB Tech editorial staff.



To accommodate our frequent in-depth reviews of the latest technology, we need reliable and always-on tech ourselves. As many of you will already know, we love admire Apple products for their reliability and good track record in our labs.

Wireless internet performance is a defining factor in our reviews of products equipped with a WiFi receiver, and for that, you need a new and practical WiFi router. Our older-style Netgear 802.11g arrangement was beginning to get fairly long in the tooth, so after seeing the Apple Time Capsule on video, and on apple.com/au, I decided that this would be a worthwhile investment.

But how did we get our hands on one so soon, you ask? A family member of mine takes frequent trips to the U.K., so I asked him to swing by Apple's flagship European store, on Regent Street in London. At 199 pounds (approx. A$430), it's not a cheap router, but it scores extra first-impression points for featuring the draft 802.11n wireless spec, a 500gb server-grade hard drive (1tb is also available) and likely Apple reliability.

Time Machine has been one of my favourite features of Mac OS X 10.5 'Leopard' - on a desktop iMac here at the office it works brilliantly. But it has been inconvenient for my MacBook Pro and I to be tethered to an external hard drive at least once a day, so Time Capsule's ability to perform wireless Time Machine backups is outstanding.

I'll write up a review, for the sake of it, in the next few weeks. Despite an overly-complicated, Australian Optus-hating setup, it appears to be a strong-performing wireless router.


Tom Baker is the editor-in-chief of TB Tech News+Blog and its sister blog, SmartMobile. He is an expert in mobile computing and a frequent writer for TB Tech.

1 comment:

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