This afternoon while browsing tech news, an article title caught my eye: "Apple to repair, replace faulty Time Capsules." About three months ago, our time capsule suddenly stopped working while I was out of town. And since it served as both my home backup and our wireless router, that was a pain in the ass. It was totally dead, so we had to go buy a new wireless router to replace it.
I took the dead Time Capsule to our wonderful tech guy at RIT, Mark, and he shook his head mournfully and said it was the second one he'd seen do the same thing, and that it was due to a ridiculously poor design choice in the internal fuse/capacitor. Since the device was two years old, and well out of warranty, to have Apple fix it would cost several hundred dollars--for that, I could just buy a new one, which I didn't want to do.
So when I saw that news headline today, I immediately clicked through, and then followed the link to the Apple support article--where I found that my Time Capsule was indeed in the range of serial numbers that were eligible for repair or replacement.
Tonight I went to the local Apple store, Time Capsule in hand, to take them up on their offer. They had no idea what I was talking about, so I used my trusty iPad to bring up the knowledgebase article. They were great about it, and immediately arranged for what they call a "quick drop"--I left the device with them, they placed an order for a brand new replacement, and they'll call me to pick it up as soon as it comes in (2-3 days). Quick, painless, and I get a brand new functioning device! w00t!
Thanks for the heads-up! Looks like our office Time Capsule is just outside the affected range (the article lists 807-814, and ours is 817). Still, good to know if it happens to anyone else.