Does anyone use a Time Capsule?

[leo8877]

Hey all, I'm looking at one of Apple's Time Capsules for a wireless and storage solution.  I'm wondering if anyone else here does that?

I'm specifically curious if you can use the TC as a media server and store iTunes on there, rather than on a laptop, and play music from the TC itself.  Actually if I could store documents, photos, and music on the TC that would be great.

Also, I'd like to use it with Mac and PC computers.  Does anyone use both and if so, how simple is it to setup and use?  My wife uses a Windows 7 machine and I'd like for her to be able to store/access files there.

[gellar]

I used to use a Time Capsule.  However the initial batches of the sumbitches had a nearly universal fatal flaw that caused the HDD to fail in a fairly consistent time frame (I think approx 18 mos).  After it failed, I decided to decouple a heat source (the HDD) from a networking device, since I realized that was a fairly dumb idea.  I now use an Apple Airport Extreme attached to some external hard drive which effectively has the same functionality.

The HDD attached serves 3 purposes:
1) Time Machine storage for my Mac
2) Easy way to X-Fer files from machine to machine in my network
3) Archived storage of OVF and VMDK files for work.

I've never tried what you're asking to do, but I suspect it wouldn't be a problem.  It basically just looks like an external Server/Folder to any other devices on the network (Windows machines require a Bonjour install for this to work).  I've found anecdotally that the experience on Windows is far less smooth than it is on OSX and I've had weird timeout issues on my Win7 machine when accessing the disk.

I don't really understand WHY you'd want to store music files there though - iTunes has the native ability to share it's contents with other iTunes installs on the network through pretty much a single button press.

[leo8877]

Thanks gellar.  As to why, it's because I don't want my iTunes library to take up space on my laptop.  My current (OLLLLLD) MacBook is a 2007 white with an 80GB HD.  If I get an air (with say, 128 GB storage), I'd rather not clutter it up with music instead of Photos.  I figure if I can stream my music from the TC, then I can put some of that 2 TB of space to good use and save the same on my laptop.

I do use the home sharing and really like it, but I don't leave one computer on at all times to be able to stream from (which I guess is always a possibility).

[gellar]

Thanks gellar.  As to why, it's because I don't want my iTunes library to take up space on my laptop.  My current (OLLLLLD) MacBook is a 2007 white with an 80GB HD.  If I get an air (with say, 128 GB storage), I'd rather not clutter it up with music instead of Photos.  I figure if I can stream my music from the TC, then I can put some of that 2 TB of space to good use and save the same on my laptop.

I do use the home sharing and really like it, but I don't leave one computer on at all times to be able to stream from (which I guess is always a possibility).

Yeah my worry would be that if you wanted to use the disk as remote storage AND still want to use home sharing, that experience may not be ideal.  Again, never tried it though.

Theoretically to set it up, you'd just go into iTunes preferences and point your library over to the new location.

[leo8877]

Thanks gellar.  As to why, it's because I don't want my iTunes library to take up space on my laptop.  My current (OLLLLLD) MacBook is a 2007 white with an 80GB HD.  If I get an air (with say, 128 GB storage), I'd rather not clutter it up with music instead of Photos.  I figure if I can stream my music from the TC, then I can put some of that 2 TB of space to good use and save the same on my laptop.

I do use the home sharing and really like it, but I don't leave one computer on at all times to be able to stream from (which I guess is always a possibility).

Yeah my worry would be that if you wanted to use the disk as remote storage AND still want to use home sharing, that experience may not be ideal.  Again, never tried it though.

Theoretically to set it up, you'd just go into iTunes preferences and point your library over to the new location.

I'll search around and see if anyone has had experience with that.  I guess I wouldn't technically need home sharing if the files were on networked storage.  Thanks again.