«Pretty good»
Not bad. Integrates nicely with OS X and good support for multiple external USB hard drives. The only thing I would like to see is to have the option to automount the external hard drives "on demand" just as the internal hard drive is mounted in OS X. Other than that, no problems thus far!
[Wednesday, January 07, 2009]
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«Lousy instructions, no cables»
Needless to say, it requires cables that are not included. This is wireless? It also requires you to know whether you are using a "Static IP address" or "PPP" for your internet service. What the hell do these mean?
[Wednesday, December 24, 2008]
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«Learning the hard way»
I've been a user of Mac osx for 5 years. I bought a Time Capsule recently, and am sharing this experience to save others pain. The device is good; but the user's manual is seriously deficient. Some tech writers are simply too close to the product to be able to see it with new eyes. They assume basics on behalf of a new user which simply are not there. I spent major portions of two days undoing the results of poor communications in the owner's guide for this device.
I bought the machine at the Apple Store in Buffalo, and they helped me set it up. So it seemed it should be a simple matter of taking it home and running it. Well, life is complicated. It turns out that my Intego firewall software was conflicting with the hardware firewall which comprises this device. So back to the store I went. (This was not Apple's fault; but I spent 2.5 hours at the store working with a guy at the genius bar. They're well named.) Nevertheless, the overlap of the firewalls could have been mentioned in the manual. After the genius solved the conflict issue, I went home assuming I would simply be able to plug in the device and live happily ever after.
Not So! And here's where the poor assumptions of the tech writers are to blame. Nowhere in the owner's guide is there a basic startup procedure. (Think of a new car buyer not being told in writing to put the key in the ignition, put your foot on the brake, start it up and put it in gear, before attempting to go anywhere.) These basic operating instructions were entirely missing. As a result, I tried to start up the device in a clumsy fashion, and ran it off the road -- only to have to take it back to the store for another hour of resetting the gizmo's preferences. I'm not a Mac novice. This all could have been avoided with the most basic of instructions. The Time Capsule seems like a great device; but the basics could be covered better. In retrospect, I should have insisted that the genius shut down the entire rig, and let me (no genius) take it out for a spin. This would have saved us both considerable time and effort. We both would have noticed that I had no license to operate this hotrod. Instead, I had to come back the next day to have said genius do his work over.
HINT: start the device from the uppermost toolbar along the top of your screen. (The icon spins slowly.) But first click on the banded arcs shaped as a slice of pie (the airport icon). Select the network to connect to, named during set up -- or found at a local hotspot. Beginning at the beginning is tremendously helpful! (Tinkering with panes that appear on the desktop is not. That's not were the ignition switch will be found.)
~eric.
[Monday, December 15, 2008]
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