AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule?

[LucasG]

As I'm kinda moving my ecosystem to Apple, I was considering improving my home network to Gigabit wireless for transfers and other things.

How reliable is AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule (2TB)? Are they worth the price or should I look for other solutions for the network and NAS? Maybe something even cheaper and better? I personally enjoy the build quality of Apple products and their warranties, but I'm really interested in making sure it's good move in general.

 

[Weaselboy]

The new tower Time Capsule is not a bad deal for a nice router and built in 2TB backup drive. It can also be used for basic file sharing, but heavy file sharing your goal a more full featured NAS might be better suited, of course a NAS costs quite a bit more too.

But if you just want a good backup solution and something to share a few files on the network, the Time Capsule is a good solution.

I have the new tower model and have been happy with it.

 

[LucasG]

Oh! So the Time Capsule has it's own router, I thought it was just a storage device. I guess I can definitely go for it then. It'll be for using iPhone/iMac/MBP and probably a few Windows computers coming in and out. But if it's 1Gbps and as long as all the devices support it I should be good, up to 50 devices right?

 

[Weaselboy]

Oh! So the Time Capsule has it's own router, I thought it was just a storage device. I guess I can definitely go for it then. It'll be for using iPhone/iMac/MBP and probably a few Windows computers coming in and out. But if it's 1Gbps and as long as all the devices support it I should be good, up to 50 devices right?

Exactly. The only support issue is you need the Airport Utility app to setup/configure the device, and that is only on OS X and iOS. But once you set it up, any device that uses wifi can login no matter what type of device it is.

The new Time Capsule's built in router also supports the newer 802.11ac wifi protocol.

 

[JAQ]

Exactly. The only support issue is you need the Airport Utility app to setup/configure the device, and that is only on OS X and iOS.

When did they stop making the Windows version of Airport Utility?

 

[Weaselboy]

When did they stop making the Windows version of Airport Utility?

They still make it and you can download it and use it with the older Airport devices. But they never updated it to work with the new tower Airport units.

 

[LucasG]

Perfect, thanks a lot Weaselboy!