Why Apple's Time Capsule is good but Time Machine is still weak

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I’ve never liked the idea of Time Machine – I back up the things that are important to me on my own schedule, and I know where it all is and how it works. Time Machine strikes me as a black box that utilizes my CPU and hard drive in a mysterious and inefficient way. Furthermore, laptops are basically left out of the party. Time Capsule is a great solution and while I still won’t be updating to Leopard, I have to hand it to Apple that an integrated 1TB hard drive in an Airport hub is a fantastic idea. Of course, they could have just made it easy for you to homebrew something like this in the first place, but why not make a few extra bucks with their own version?

The hub is a natural place for low-intensity, high-volume data storage: it’s out of the way, it’s connected, and it’s not going to be used for anything else. There’s no chance of losing it, after all it’s attached to the wall. I’ve always had a fear of partitions (due to an early trauma) so a dedicated backup server is a good solution for me, and also for the people who don’t want cables and mixed external HDs laying around the place. Not to mention those who are simply responsible and prescient enough to back up their important things regularly and as such find Time Machine superfluous and wasteful. As for the price, well you know the line: if you can afford an Apple computer, you can afford a $500 network hub to back up all your bad photos and amateur Buffy novelization drafts.