Just recently, I was in the market for an external hard drive for our Apple Mac home network. Our current setup was an Apple Desktop G4, PowerBook laptop, Apple Base station and a HP printer. I also utilized this wireless network with a IBM windows laptop. With each computer came storage limitations that impacted performance, so I decided to research external hard drives about 2 weeks ago.

After completing a week of research, I decided on the Apple Time Capsule. This product also includes a wireless range of 802.11n, an improved speed from current products. As I traveled to my local Apple store, I went to see the product in person, very sleek design. Talking with the store rep about the options, the only downside was the price; a 500GB Time Capsule was retailing at $299.

Interested in the Time Capsule, I asked how much of a discount that I would be eligible for? The only thing was $20 off for a student discount, less than 10%….Thinking about it some more in the store, I was hard pressed to spend that amount, so I asked what other options are there since I already have a wireless modem and network setup, just looking for some more hard drive space.

I was informed that I could hookup an external hard drive to the Base Station that was compatible with Macs. Excited about the alternative, I researched and landed on the Western Digital My Book 2.0 500GB drive for about $100 on EBAY.

So the moment of truth was last night when I was integrating this device to my network. 5 hours later with a significant amount of frustration, the device didn’t integrate smoothly. So I decided to drive to the closest Best Buy retailed to see if I could get some advice….After a couple hours in Best Buy talking to their network expert, I came away that the best solution was the Time Capsule. To put my networking charade to an end, I decided to buy the product at Best Buy since they carry Apple products.

Getting home, I have to say I enjoy the product so far and it only took about 30 minutes to setup.

After all of the time that I spent researching the product and then trying to get a cheaper alternative, I should have purchased the product with my student discount. My frustration got the better of me and I failed to save on this purchase, if anything wasted significant time and gas money to end up with my initial selection. I should have just purchased it on Amazon…chalk this up as a lesson learned.

Don’t underestimate how valuable your time is, realizing that I get caught up in analysis paralysis I am going to work on that in the future.

If you have an Apple network and are in need for an external hard drive, I would recommend the Time Capsule.

Even though I only had this product for a few days, here is the item that I originally purchased. Maybe you have the knowledge to set this device up within an Apple network, clearly I decided to throw money at my problem at pay the premium for the Apple Time Capsule.

Author Disclosure: At the time of posting, I do not have any positions in the companies mentioned above.