Time Capsule Advice - new to Mac

[ewiley28]

I'm looking for some advice to help me decide whether or not to order a time capsule. I am currently ordering my first mac (Vista drove me to decide that leopard with vmware running xp for the couple of things I do that require a pc was the best idea). I'm ordering the 15 inch Macbook Pro at 2.5 ghz with the 200 gig hard drive @ 7200 rpm. I already have the ram to upgrade it to 4 gig of ram once I receive it.

I would like to be able to back up wirelessly and automatically. I know that the time capsule is one way to do this, but where I'm confused is whether I can do automatic backup to a different network drive?

If TIme Capsule is the only way to integrate the upgrades and make them automatic, I will go ahead and order it. Otherwise, I will just keep using our raided networked drives and router/repeaters.

I haven't been able to find a clear answer, so I'd appreciate any help to figure this out.

 

[icecold0913]

You don't need a Time Capsule to backup using Time Machine in Leopard. Time Machine allows you to backup to any external hard drive (Time Capsule or otherwise) on your network. Time Capsule is just a Airport Extreme router combined with a hard drive to enable you to easily backup your data wirelessly, making it ideal for laptops.

In Time Machine you can choose whichever drive on your network you want your Macbook to automatically backup to. I think you can only choose one backup drive per Mac, but I'm not 100 percent certain on that one.

Hope that's not too confusing... you also might want to check out http://apple.com/timecapsule if you haven't already.

 

[MattZani]

As stated, a Time Capsule is just an Airport Extreme, with a 500Gb Hdd inside, and Time Machine will default search for a Time Capsule to back up to, but if it doesnt find one, you can back upto anything the MBP can see (Networked or Wired straight to MBP) So go ahead and use your networked drive space.

Although, consider an AEBS or TC, as they are kick ass N routers, which handle 5 Consoles (3 PS3, 2 360) Gaming online at the same time, and it doesnt get hot!

 

[Batt]

I know a lot of people are saying you can use an AEBS and an external drive for TC, but I'm still not sure Apple officially supports it, and I've seen more than one comment from people having trouble.
The fool-proof, Apple-sanctioned method is Time Capsule.
I have one, and it couldn't be easier to set up and use.
My 2¢.

 

[Eric.]

I know a lot of people are saying you can use an AEBS and an external drive for TC, but I'm still not sure Apple officially supports it, and I've seen more than one comment from people having trouble.
The fool-proof, Apple-sanctioned method is Time Capsule.
I have one, and it couldn't be easier to set up and use.
My 2¢.

The AEBS page says that the USB port is for sharing printers and/or hard drives.