I "trust" my Time Capsule, as much as I trust any electronic device. How many of you have read about failed hard-drive enclosures, or had it happen to you? My guess is that it's not uncommon for HD enclosures to fail.
I've read a lot of the Time Capsule threads here, and my understanding is that the problems with 1st-gen TCs dying around 18 months were due to substandard capacitors in the power supply. They failed when subjected to heat they should have been able to handle. Many people make the
assumption that the "real problem" is the design, which packs the power supply, the drive, and the electronics into a small case. Since the newer ones have a similar (though internally a little different) design, they say "Don't buy one! They haven't fixed the problem!" I'd bet that Apple is smart enough to do a proper thermal design, and the initial generation problems will not repeat themselves.
Besides, you're not betting
all that much, anyway, because when the (older) TCs died, the data was still safe on the drive. You could still get your data back, and though Apple would tell you not to do it yourself, it's
easy to do and Apple would never know the difference. Handle it like a failed hard drive enclosure. (The only trick is to know to use a hair dryer to soften up the glue holding the rubber pad on the bottom.)
I've had a 1st-gen TC for over three years. Its serial number is within the problem range that Apple has published. It's never failed in any way and I've been very happy with it. After 2 1/2 years I needed more space so I replaced the original 500 GB drive with a 2 TB "Green" drive. Was easy to do. (Some might say I put a lower-heat drive in there and that's why mine still works. Maybe. But it lasted around 30 months with the original drive...)
Well enough about Time Capsules...
You don't mention a budget, but maybe you want to think about a NAS that plays nicely with Time Machine. After reading about the Synology DS411j here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1117716/ and here:
http://www.amazon.com/Synology-DiskStation-Diskless-Attached-DS411J/dp/B0049MPQGS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1307983627&sr=8-1 I've been wanting one for myself! I believe they're advertised as Time Machine compatible.
I'm not so sure about plugging an external drive into the AEBS for Time Machine use. Reading the posts here, it seems it works for most, but not for everyone. Also, it is officially not recommended / unsupported by Apple -- they say (claim?)
"Time Machine cant back up to an external disk connected to an AirPort Extreme" (
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/15139.html) Even if it appears to work OK, do you want to trust your backups to it? Could if some firmware glitch cause some of the data to be unuseable? That'd be worse than an "enclosure failure."
I think you're on the right track thinking about wireless backup, though, because of the portable computer. I believe it's important that backups take place automatically to eliminate human error. If you have to plug / unplug an external drive to the portable computer all the time, you'll probably stop doing it and backups will happen very infrequently!
Good luck on whatever you decide.
