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A few months ago I set about to setup printer and file sharing for my house. I reclaimed and old server and installed Linux/Samba. After wrestling with it for a weekend or two, I had printer sharing up and running, but was still trying to figure out how to make file sharing work the way I wanted to.

I haven’t really messed with it for a few months, so fast forward to this weekend. My dad called and needed a couple computers for a new business he is starting, so I figured I could give him the computer acting as a my server and my 4 year old Dell that hasn’t been getting much use since my wife and I both have Macbooks now. But do so this, I needed to replace the server with something that would do file and print sharing for me.

I searched around the Internet a bit and there are devices that seem to do really good file sharing, and devices geared toward printing. Very few that contain both features, and those that did were not getting good reviews. That led to be looking at Apple’s Time Capsule. Chris, one of the guys who works with me and self proclaimed Mac elitist, already had one. I consulted him, he didn’t have much bad to say about it. So I went to Best Buy (Which I hate myself for…but it is closer than the Apple store) and slapped down $300 for the 500G version of Time Capsule.

So I set about configuring the Time Capsule, which took maybe 30 minutes tops. I had it act as a wireless client on my network, not as my router. I have a router that is working just great. I plugged in my Lexmark laser printer via USB, went to the Printer’s and Fax control panel in OSX and added the printer. It figured out the correct driver and everything with no help. So it was setup and printing within 30 minutes. File sharing was equally as easy. I went to “Network” in finder and Time Capsule popped up, clicked on it, and was able to start copying files over to it. Everything was working from the Mac side.

Then I decided that if Time Capsule was wireless there was absolutely no reason for my printers to be upstairs in the office, considering most of the time Steph and I use the computers downstairs. So I moved the time capsule and my two printers downstairs.

The last thing I had to do was copy the data from my old XP machine out to the Time Capsule. For this I had to install Bonjour on the PC from a CD that came with the Time Capsule. This took about 3 minutes! Then I went into the Bounjour printer utility in about another minute I had the printer setup and working. The only thing left was to be able to file share from the PC. I went to the “Network Places” on XP hoping the Time Capsule would just show up….no dice. So I consulted the Internet, which seemed to say I needed to reboot my PC. I did that, and upon reboot it popped up and said it had found the Time Capsule and asked for the file sharing password. Then it automatically mapped a drive for me. Couldn’t have been easier!

I am very impressed with the Time Capsule. The only thing that I wish time capsule had was some form of redundant disk configuration. I don’t like the thought off all my data being on one disk. It would be cool if Apple made it possible to buy a second Time Capsule and set it up to mirror data. I know you can do this with a USB device, but something automatic would make this perfect.

Once I get the data copied off the old XP machine, I can make the final step to being a 100% Mac household. But even if you are a PC household Time Capsule works great! If you need file and print sharing, check out Time Capsule.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, September 14th, 2008 at 7:21 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.