Time Capsule - Home Storage & Backup

We've come a long way from the days of the Classic Mac and Fat Mac to where we are today in terms of processor speed, OS reliability, and most of all disk space. Going back to the early 80s I can remember the time when storage was treated as a precious commodity and while I'm glad I don't have to watch every megabyte I use up - I fear that we're heading for trouble. In previous posts I described the rapid pace at which I've been burning through storage space on my MacBookPro.

The good news I see some positive benefits on the horizon:

• TimeMachine - with the release of Leopard OS X now contains a built-in easy to use and configure back-up system. To-date I've been running Leopard and using a TimeMachine back-up with a Western Digital MyBook connected via Firewire 400. At this point I've partitioned the back-up drive in two segments: i) for TimeMachine and ii) for backing up some Audio files. I will say that Time Machine is a bit of a disk hog so depending upon how much data you want to back-up a bigger drive is better.
• TimeCapsule - one of the more interesting announcements from this years MacWorld is the launch of TimeCapsule - essentially a combination wireless router (Airport Extreme) and a built-in harddrive (in either 500GB or 1TB sizes) that enable over the air back-up of any Macs in your home. After checking the prices of 1TB drives at Costco on the weekend it would seem that Apple has the pricing right on this device avoiding the typical "Apple Tax" that Apple fans are forced to pay. The only area of uncertainty on the web at the moment is whether the TimeCapsule drive must be dedicated to TimeMachine back-ups or whether it can be used as a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device. The consensus at the moment appears to be that its for TimeMachine alone.
  
• Other NAS drives for home use - A number of NAS drives exist targeted at the home market with a number of new devices being launched earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. My thought here is that given the growth in the amount of digital content that we're all generating and wanting to keep at home the idea of a NAS that is a central file store within the house is a great idea. I see both NAS options such as the Drobo or Apple's TimeCapsule as solving the biggest headache for most users which is the need to have an external hard drive plugged into your laptop and the hassle of accessing external drives across multiple machines. It seems clear that wireless connectivity to your back-up drive is definitely the way to go.
  

At this point I still have storage space and time left to pick an appropriate option but the next move upwards in drive size will see me heading the way of a home based NAS.