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Apple is proud with its networking product the Apple Airport Extreme base station which is very popular and receives very positive responses from the users with averagely 4.4 out of five stars customer ratings. Apple also introduces new full-featured Airport Extreme – the Apple Time Capsule. The main feature this new full-features of Apple Extreme is that it supports the Mac Time Machine system that allows you to create an automatic backup strategy eliminating the always forget back-up task for Mac users. Netgear would like to attract Mac users by introduces new WNDRMAC wireless N600 router which is designed to be truly Mac compatible as well as Windows. If you examine the manufacturer’s description thoroughly, this new N600 router is designed to compete with Apple Time Capsule. Are there any feature differences with Apple Time Capsule? Time Machine Support Your data is a valuable asset that must be protected like other assets. Imagine that your valuable unforgettable wedding memory images stored in your computer hard disk are lost due to hard disk crashed and no backup is available. How can you restore them? Even though technology is currently available to restore all the files of the crashed hard disk back but you need to have the expert done it for you and guess what, you have to spend lots of money to have them restored. Time machine in Mac system comes to help you manage the backup strategy automatically. Both Apple Time Capsule and Netgear WNDRMAC support Time Machine. With the attached storage on the router, all the Mac and PC computers on the network can start a full backup for the first time to the attached storage (that will take hours depends on how big your data is) and later on the Time machine system will manage the backup for you all the time. Forget about the daily, weekly or monthly backup strategy, time machine will update the backup only to the data that is changed or created. Shared Printer Support Both WNDRMAC and Time capsule support shared printer attached to the USB port using bonjour printing. Mac with Bonjour printing can recognize the attached printer you can add to your “system preference”. For Windows users, they can use the bonjour printing application by downloading the bonjour application for Windows which is compatible with Mac. Any Windows XP SP2, Vista and Windows 7 can be supported. Gigabit Ports One of unimportant differences between the two routers is the number of gigabit Ethernet ports. WNDRMAC includes five Gigabit ports (4xLAN and 1xWAN) while Time Capsule includes four Gigabit ports (3xLAN and 1xWAN). Built-in Media Server Both WNDRMAC and Time Capsule include built-in media server. But WNDRMAC is DLNA certified, meaning you can stream HD video and other media files seamlessly on any types of DLNA compliant devices such as XBOX360, PS2/3, Blu-Ray player etc. What I find the main difference between the two is that the WNDRMAC can be configured as the repeater with WDS (Wireless Distribution Support) support but Time Capsule cannot. The WNDRMAC is a premium router, why should you purchase two premium routers and use one of them as the wireless repeater? I think you just waste it. Should you require a repeater function; you can install a true repeater device such as DAP-1360 which the price is less than half as much as the WNDRMAC router. Now, which one is the best to meet your need? You’ll be the judge. By Ki Grinsing an MCSE and CCNA Engineer. Both WNDRMAC and Time Capsule are Wireless N600 Dual Band routers. See also the guidelines in choosing the best router for iPad
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