Having said all that I agree that Apple should put a replacement program forth if indeed the issue is endemic (and you can accomplish this by two methods: email steve@apple.com and also log in to the feedback site and file your issues – it’s what will give them visibility – not that the TCMW site won’t be helpful either…) and especially if due to capacitors (very easy to fix), however the pressure should be put by big companies, and not just Apple, towards the crappy capacitor manufacturers. You just cannot imagine how many of these are out there… It’s sick that they’re still being sold…

@Astrochimp:
“Microsoft is honest and proactive about security solutions.”

You are highly misled and seemingly “astroturfing”…

laCie however, had a 1 year warranty, which they retro actively just extended to 3 years for all their big hard drives.

Also, once I realized that the power supply was the issue, simple requests for a new one gets me one every time (free and expedited mail).

That the power supplies have a high failure rate is obvious, but laCie’s power supplies are external and easily replaced, while the Apple Time Capsule is more problematic (perhaps impossible) to easily replace.

I highly recommend a low power (i.e. bus powered, hence no power supply) HD backup drive from laCie.

The power supplies that die (from laCie) are all made in China.

I’m not down on Apple and I remain a customer, but I hope (and expect) some kind of resolution to this issue in the form of a recall or extended warranty.

“Either the domain has been overused, or the reseller ran out of resources.”

???

I recommend a Windows Home Server – it’s robust against any one hard drive failure, and it’s much cheaper than storage in the cloud for large collections of pictures or videos (which I have).

Backups are automatic, complete. You can access individual file versions in any one backup.

It’s not cheap, but this is a simple, robust consumer solution. All I’m missing is an off-site backup, and a solution is in the works.

It makes many other things easy as well – hard drive failures are easy to recover from. One can replace your 60 gig hard drive with a 500 gig one. (I’ve done it.) It supports Windows 7, and I think it supports Mac too.

Apple has never been honest about security problems, either. But, surprisingly to some, Microsoft is honest and proactive about security solutions. Get Windows 7, guys – it’s more secure, and you’lll save $$$ in the long run.

Gonna be breaking out the external hard drive to back up my backup!

I know it was the devices, because new ones restored service perfectly.

Those two items lasted almost exactly 18 months each. One sat on a bookshelf. One was plugged into a wall outlet. They processed electrons and radio waves for 18 months — that is, they did very little physical work — and then they died.

I’ve got a 17 year old refrigerator that seems to work a lot harder in the physical sense, and it is chilling away. Ditto for a 15 year old clothes dryer, not to mention a 12-inch color TV that is probably 23 years old (it only goes up to channel 66).

When I pointed out to the Genius who took care of me at my local Apple store that these appliances out to last longer than 18 months, given that they don’t actually do that much, I got the Genius special: a sullen, sour-ball look.

But at least I’m not entrusting all my digital life to the Airports. I use an offsite service rather than Time Capsule.