Hardware
Time Capsule
20/03/08 22:49
Apple Time
Capsule
My apple Time Capsule arrived just over a week ago now, about the 8th of March.
I decided to go for the 500 GB model instead of the 1 TB as I figured by the time the 500 GB was full, the price of 1 TB HDD would have fallen quite a bit, and from what i've seen on some blog post's it's quite easy to replace the Time capsule HDD yourself.
What can I say about the packaging apart from Apple impressed me again.
Once opened you find the Time Capsule, a few user manuals in a variety of languages and a disc containing a new version of the Airport software for Time Capsule.
What you won't find however is a network cable. I don't know why, maybe Apple think whatever size cable they put in the box won't be the right size, or maybe it's just a way for them to save a money. Whatever the reason please just be aware if you don't have a spare network cable in a box somewhere in your house your going to have to go buy one.
I took a few un-boxing pictures while I went through everything, I think it's just something you have to do nowadays with Apple products, then prepared to set Time Capsule up for the first time.
I'll explain the positioning of my Time Capsule quickly, it will become apparent why I do this later on.
I have a Plasma TV mounted on the wall in my living room, with a small door in the corner allowing me excess behind it to get to all the plugs and wiring etc. I've installed a few shelves, back there where I have my Linksys WAG 54 G router.
I've placed my Time Capsule and a few external HDD's connected via a Kingston 7 port USB hub. It's a bit crowded, but everything is out of sight and no one gets to see the pile of cable that could easily be mistaken for spaghetti.
Once i'd got the Time Capsule in place it was time for the setup.
I installed the disc with the new Airport software on it, that was straight forward as you'd expect, then plugged in the Time Capsule.
The setup via Airport Utility was straight forward and took less than 10 minutes. I chose the manual setup, enabled WPA encryption etc.
Once this was done I was ready for my first backup. This didn't go according to plan, I got the preparing message in a little box for about 30 minutes.
After trying it again with the same results I decided to do the auto setup option, this took very little time and once I opened Time Machine preferences and chose the disk for the backup, it started straight away with no problems.
Earlier on in the day I had moved my itunes library to an external HDD via FW800, once I verified it was OK I deleted it from my MBP, I also chose not to back up any movie files and a few other things, to help reduce the size of my first Time Capsule backup.
I was left with about 46 GB of files to back up using Time Capsule. Once I set Time Machine away doing the back up, it was apparent it was going to take a while.
In total it took just over 8 hrs to backup the 46 GB. As I mentioned earlier, because of the placement of the Time Capsule I was expecting a slow transfer speeds, and I got it.
I did move my MBP closer to the Time Capsule and did see a improvement in the transfer speeds.The speeds I got were about 3.5 mb/s and when I moved it closer to the Time Capsule this improved to about 7.0 mb/s.
Overall I'm very happy with Time Capsule. I'm now able to move about the house again freely with my MBP, no more tied to the desk with multiple HDD's attached to it.
Apple have now released Time Machine and Airport Updates v1.0 which improves compatibility for Time Machine and Time Capsule.
From what has been said on a few of the blog sites, it's also enabled Time Machine backup's to external HDD's attached to Airport Extreme's, although as of yet Apple have not officially said this.
My apple Time Capsule arrived just over a week ago now, about the 8th of March.
I decided to go for the 500 GB model instead of the 1 TB as I figured by the time the 500 GB was full, the price of 1 TB HDD would have fallen quite a bit, and from what i've seen on some blog post's it's quite easy to replace the Time capsule HDD yourself.
What can I say about the packaging apart from Apple impressed me again.
Once opened you find the Time Capsule, a few user manuals in a variety of languages and a disc containing a new version of the Airport software for Time Capsule.
What you won't find however is a network cable. I don't know why, maybe Apple think whatever size cable they put in the box won't be the right size, or maybe it's just a way for them to save a money. Whatever the reason please just be aware if you don't have a spare network cable in a box somewhere in your house your going to have to go buy one.
I took a few un-boxing pictures while I went through everything, I think it's just something you have to do nowadays with Apple products, then prepared to set Time Capsule up for the first time.
I'll explain the positioning of my Time Capsule quickly, it will become apparent why I do this later on.
I have a Plasma TV mounted on the wall in my living room, with a small door in the corner allowing me excess behind it to get to all the plugs and wiring etc. I've installed a few shelves, back there where I have my Linksys WAG 54 G router.
I've placed my Time Capsule and a few external HDD's connected via a Kingston 7 port USB hub. It's a bit crowded, but everything is out of sight and no one gets to see the pile of cable that could easily be mistaken for spaghetti.
Once i'd got the Time Capsule in place it was time for the setup.
I installed the disc with the new Airport software on it, that was straight forward as you'd expect, then plugged in the Time Capsule.
The setup via Airport Utility was straight forward and took less than 10 minutes. I chose the manual setup, enabled WPA encryption etc.
Once this was done I was ready for my first backup. This didn't go according to plan, I got the preparing message in a little box for about 30 minutes.
After trying it again with the same results I decided to do the auto setup option, this took very little time and once I opened Time Machine preferences and chose the disk for the backup, it started straight away with no problems.
Earlier on in the day I had moved my itunes library to an external HDD via FW800, once I verified it was OK I deleted it from my MBP, I also chose not to back up any movie files and a few other things, to help reduce the size of my first Time Capsule backup.
I was left with about 46 GB of files to back up using Time Capsule. Once I set Time Machine away doing the back up, it was apparent it was going to take a while.
In total it took just over 8 hrs to backup the 46 GB. As I mentioned earlier, because of the placement of the Time Capsule I was expecting a slow transfer speeds, and I got it.
I did move my MBP closer to the Time Capsule and did see a improvement in the transfer speeds.The speeds I got were about 3.5 mb/s and when I moved it closer to the Time Capsule this improved to about 7.0 mb/s.
Overall I'm very happy with Time Capsule. I'm now able to move about the house again freely with my MBP, no more tied to the desk with multiple HDD's attached to it.
Apple have now released Time Machine and Airport Updates v1.0 which improves compatibility for Time Machine and Time Capsule.
From what has been said on a few of the blog sites, it's also enabled Time Machine backup's to external HDD's attached to Airport Extreme's, although as of yet Apple have not officially said this.
|
Apple TV
15/03/08 20:53
Although I feel that the Apple TV take 2 is a
improvement on the first offering from Apple,
It's still not enough to make me feel like I need
one.
It still hasn't got enough features to justify the cost yet in my opinion. Dont get me wrong, I think it's a wonderful device, looks good and has a host of features i'd like, but none that I need.
With the recent blog posts about Apples latest patent filing concerning the a DVR feature it suddenly gets a lot more exciting.
Add that to the rumor of talks with Sony on the addition of Blu-Ray players to to Apple computers.....
Well lets just say that an Apple TV with the inclusion of a DVR and a Blu-Ray drive would mean I would have to buy one.
If it turns out to be more than a rumor and one day apple releases such a product then I think they would truly have a device capable of taking a large chunk of the DVR market, combined with the Blu-Ray player and the features now available with Apple TV it would be a truly amazing device.
Oh well, we'll just wait and see.........................
It still hasn't got enough features to justify the cost yet in my opinion. Dont get me wrong, I think it's a wonderful device, looks good and has a host of features i'd like, but none that I need.
With the recent blog posts about Apples latest patent filing concerning the a DVR feature it suddenly gets a lot more exciting.
Add that to the rumor of talks with Sony on the addition of Blu-Ray players to to Apple computers.....
Well lets just say that an Apple TV with the inclusion of a DVR and a Blu-Ray drive would mean I would have to buy one.
If it turns out to be more than a rumor and one day apple releases such a product then I think they would truly have a device capable of taking a large chunk of the DVR market, combined with the Blu-Ray player and the features now available with Apple TV it would be a truly amazing device.
Oh well, we'll just wait and see.........................
Macbook Pro Trackpad
28/02/08 20:30
Cali Lewis from
Geekbrief.TV
mentioned on her show that Macbook Pro users can
use the Trackpad to zoom in and out on Google
Earth.
I tried it and it's true, it works just like the new multi-touch Trackpad on the Macbook Air and new Macbook Pro's.
You can pinch and expand your fingers to zoom in and out.
I tried it and it's true, it works just like the new multi-touch Trackpad on the Macbook Air and new Macbook Pro's.
You can pinch and expand your fingers to zoom in and out.