By Ki Grinsing

Apple Time Capsule Vs New Netgear WNDRMAC – both are dual band wireless routers support Mac and PC, time machines and Bonjour printing

Overview

If you read the customer reviews about Apple Airport Extreme base station you’ll be surprised that the router receives very positive responses from the users with 4.4 out of five stars customer ratings. Apple also introduces a full-features Airport Extreme – the Apple Time Capsule. The main difference between the Airport Extreme and the Time Capsule is that Time Capsule supports Mac – time machine and Bonjour printing. You can also find these main features on new Netgear true Mac router – WNDRMAC which is designed for Mac and PC. What are the main differences between the two routers?

Time Machine

What is Time Machine? Time machine in Mac allows you create an automatic backup strategy to a shared storage on the network. At the first time, each of the Mac and PC computers on the network can backup the documents / the hard disk to the target storage entirely. This can take hours or even the whole night and then later on the system will perform differential backup only to any files changed or new files addition automatically. You can forget all the backup tasks, all the tasks are done by the system automatically. Both new WNDRMAC and Time Capsule support this Time Machine system. With Time machine support you can protect your valuable information assets against any hard disk crashed that can cause your unforgettable wedding memory images or image collections of your growing kids lost.

With the attached shared storage on the router (WNDRMAC or Time Capsule), users can initiate the time machine application at the first time by selecting the attached storage as the backup target and then later the system will do the backup tasks automatically.

Bonjour Printing

Bonjour is an open source software or known as the zero-configuration networking to enable automatic discovery of the computers, devices, and services on IP networks using industry standard IP protocols. Mac OS X and iOS can support this Bonjour software and Windows computers can download the Bonjour here to support this software.

Both WNDRMAC and Time capsule routers support Bonjour printing that allow users on the network recognize the attached printer on the router. In Mac you can add the attached printer on the router to your “system preference”. Similar to Windows computers with Bonjour system downloaded from the link above can utilize the power of Bonjour printing. All windows OS are supported including XP SP2, Vista and the latest Windows 7.

Gigabit Ports

Most of the users only use no more than 2 ethernet ports for direct connection to the desktop computers. Or sometimes one port is used to connect the UTP cable to upstairs for extending the wireless coverage by adding a wireless AP.

Gigabit port is much more advantageous to support high data rate throughput, no worries routers are geared with gigabit ports both LAN (4x) and WAN interfaces.

Built-in Media Server

Both WNDRMAC and Time Capsule include one USB port with built-in media server. The Netgear WNDRMAC with built-in media server is DLNA certified, which means you can seamlessly connect any types of DLNA compliant devices including the XBOX 360, Blu-ray player, PS2/3, HDTV etc.

So what is the main difference between the two routers? The main difference is that the WNDRMAC can be configured as the wireless repeater with Wireless Distribution Support (WDS) support but Time capsule cannot. Some people might think this is advantageous but I don’t think so because the WNDRMAC is premium router. Should you require extending the wireless range you can purchase any models of wifi range extenders which is cheaper than WNDRMAC. So which one is the most valuable device to meet your need? You’ll judge.