setting up a basic home network

Sharing music and videos between your devices is straightforward using iTunes Home Sharing. Simply set up a common account and import movies and music into that account.

Sharing pictures is not so easy as iPhoto has its own library that you have to import into. If you are just using a folder of pictures, you can use any device that both computers have access to (i.e., set up a share).

I would discourage the purchase of Time Capsule as it is very expensive for what it does, and is not expandable. A better solution would be to get a Airport Extreme and attach an external hard drive to that. Then use that HDD for your Time Machine backups.

 

first off you can replace the time capsule hard drive, I just did that for my friend. And you can't bck up to a AEBS or TC USB disk, atleast not withiute some heavylifting terminal usage, and then it will still create errors.

 

This article disagrees with you:

http://gizmodo.com/370017/how+to-use-time-machine-with-an-airport-extreme

Have there been changes lately that make this not possible?

 

What you are saying will work but it will be quite expensive.

Simple and cheapest (use the iMac as your data server):
Syncing
- Leave your iMac on all the time (you can allow your hard disk and monitor sleep though)
- Sync the Macbook to the iMac via Chronosync

Back up
- Get a large external hard drive that can handle the full capacity of your iMac and Macbook.
- Use Carbon Copy Cloner, hereinafter CCC, instead of Time Machine.

With CCC you get an exact bootable backup of your computer. That way when your iMac's or Macbook's hard drive fail you will be able to boot off your backup drive and clone that backup to the replacement drive, eliminating downtime. To accomplish this bootable backup your external should be formatted with all the Mac OS partitions on your iMac and Macbook, you can find all of these via Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility). So if you have two 500GB hard drives and a 1TB hard drive then get a 2TB and partition accordingly via Disk Utility. Then you can set up the CCC scheduled tasks.

I would actually get two externals that you can swap them out. Then keep the other in a bolted down fire/water resistant safe.

Centralized files (ie multimedia) can be put in a shared folders on the iMac for all devices to have concurrent access to. You can also set limits so only some users can add/delete files while others can only view them. You can also share your files online making them accessible anywhere in the world with an internet connection.

Dedicated Device:

If you want a dedicated device I would build a simple file server with Windows 7 or XP home. I say build one as you can control the parts to keep energy usage at a minimum yet maintain expandability. This is really the best option though the most difficult to set up. As it is cheaper than the time capsule yet more expandable than the iMac. Plus depending on your usage it can be more energy efficient than the iMac. Syncing would be performed by Chronosync, Backups of the server via Memeo Premium Backup and centralized files by automated mounting of shared folders.

Linux would be more efficient for networking but would increase difficulty in configuring at least five fold.