Here's why if you have an Air and a Time Capsule you should have bought the USB->Ethernet adapter. Don't leave home without it ;-)
Yesterday it seemed my Air got screwed up so I had to restore from my Time Capsule. This was non trivial at first because if you try to do it wirelessly it will take forever. This was a complete restore from the Install application not a selective file restore. It's not exactly clear how that's done but what you do is boot Leopard install DVD and then select under Utilities "Restore from Time Machine Backup" and follow the steps. Now the trick is that if you do it wireless it will take a very long time so in my case I wanted to do it over ethernet to the Time Caspule. Well doing that will take up the one USB port the MacBook Air has and you cannot boot into the Installer App via DVD and then remove the Superdrive thinking that it only needs the Time Capsule to do the restore. It seems to need to load more from the DVD during the restore step. So the only way this can be done with a device like Time Capsule is to use Remote Disk which frees up the USB port such that it can be plugged into the ethernet LAN port of the Time Capsule with the USB -> Ethernet adapter.
Doing it this way dramatically improves the restore time.
If anybody knows how this can be done over ethernet when you don't have another computer to use for Remote Disk I'd like to know about it. From what I could tell you always have to have the DVD available during the restore step which because the Superdrive has to be plugged into the MacBook Air's port only will take up all available ports.
Yesterday it seemed my Air got screwed up so I had to restore from my Time Capsule. This was non trivial at first because if you try to do it wirelessly it will take forever. This was a complete restore from the Install application not a selective file restore. It's not exactly clear how that's done but what you do is boot Leopard install DVD and then select under Utilities "Restore from Time Machine Backup" and follow the steps. Now the trick is that if you do it wireless it will take a very long time so in my case I wanted to do it over ethernet to the Time Caspule. Well doing that will take up the one USB port the MacBook Air has and you cannot boot into the Installer App via DVD and then remove the Superdrive thinking that it only needs the Time Capsule to do the restore. It seems to need to load more from the DVD during the restore step. So the only way this can be done with a device like Time Capsule is to use Remote Disk which frees up the USB port such that it can be plugged into the ethernet LAN port of the Time Capsule with the USB -> Ethernet adapter.
Doing it this way dramatically improves the restore time.
If anybody knows how this can be done over ethernet when you don't have another computer to use for Remote Disk I'd like to know about it. From what I could tell you always have to have the DVD available during the restore step which because the Superdrive has to be plugged into the MacBook Air's port only will take up all available ports.
