TIME CAPSULE IS A BACKUP FOR EVERYONE
 Back
in August of 2006, I reported on Apple's upcoming OS X
10.5 or "Leopard" operating system and specifically
wrote about its Time Machine backup feature. Time
Machine automatically backs up everything on your hard
drive. When I say "automatically," that means it backs
up everything without you having to do anything at all.
All you have to do is to plug in or assign a connected
hard drive to be used as the receptacle into which all
the backing up will be contained.
At the recent Macworld convention, Apple introduced the
Time Capsule. This is a hard drive that's specifically
tailored to work with Time Machine. So what makes this
different than any other hard drive you could connect?
The difference is that the connection is wireless.
The Time Capsule will be available in either a 500
gigabyte or a 1 terabyte capacity (That's 1000
gigabytes). Apple has made it pretty easy to setup as
well as use. According to Apple, you just set Time
Capsule to be the designated backup drive for Time
Machine and that's pretty much all you have to do.
Time Capsule uses the faster 802.11n wireless standard
which is pretty fast when it comes to wireless data
transmissions. But it's still a lot slower than a
directly wired connection such as Ethernet gigabit. But
with that in mind, you can still hook up Time Capsule
with a wired connection and leave the wireless for your
other Macs that may be in other nearby rooms. That's
right, the Time Capsule can provide backup for multiple
Macintosh computers at the same time.
With Time Capsule, you don't have to have a separate
hard drive connected to every computer. After all,
external hard drives can still be fairly costly.
Time Capsule offers an alternative, effective solution
that lets you provide an automated backup system for
every Mac in the house.
In addition to being a wireless hard drive, the Time
Capsule is also an Airport Extreme Base Station. Using
the USB port, you can set up most any printer for
sharing so that any Mac and PC in the house can use it
to print via Apple's Bonjour networking technology.
Because the Time Capsule will mount as a wireless hard
drive, you can also use it with Windows XP and Vista as
an external hard drive but its main function is to act
as a wireless backup storage device that works
seamlessly with Leopard's Time Machine.
As of this column, Apple is taking orders for Time
Capsule at its online store and will be shipping them in
February. The 500 GB model sells for $299, the 1 TB for
$499.
www.apple.com
| Craig Crossman is
a McClatchy-Tribune newspaper columnist writing about computers and
technology. He also hosts the nation's longest running nationally syndicated radio talk show on
computers and technology, Computer America, heard on both the Business TalkRadio
Network® and the Lifestyle TalkRadio Network®, weeknights at 10PM Eastern
time. Visit his website at http://www.computeramerica.com |
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