Amid all the hype around Apple's MacBook Air notebook computer, little has been reported about the new Time Capsule wireless backup device. Will it work with non-Macintosh computers?
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DQ: With Time Capsule, Apple has put two technologies together: large hard disks and wireless communications. The company describes Time Capsule as an appliance that provides automatic wireless backup of data on one or more Macintosh computers running the Mac OS X Leopard operating system in your home. It combines an 802.11n Wi-fi base station with a 500-gigabyte or 1-terabyte hard drive. A terabyte is equal to 1,000GB.
The device functions with Leopard's Time Machine automatic backup utility. This technology allows a user to create incremental backups of files and restore a computer to a previous date, or 'look back in time' and grab a file that was inadvertently erased.
It is possible to set up a system with a Windows-based personal computer or Linux machine that recognises Apple's network-attached storage device. Sadly, the only way to determine if this will work is to set it up then trash the machine to see what happens. If you're seriously considering doing this, use some other kind of backup first. Make a copy of your applications and data in separate places.
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