Do you know what we absolutely detest? Wires. Although we've been able to use strategically placed furniture and cable hiding products to reduce visible wiring, even our small studio apartment is lined with a Medusa's head full of ethernet cables, phone lines, USB/Firewire cables, and power cords that threaten to drown us in a tangle of technological tethers.
An ongoing and welcome trend in home decor/lifestyles items is the emancipation from the traditional limits of cord bound products, whether it be wireless internet connection, home theater or automated vacuums. So you couldn't fathom how pleased we were after purchasing the new Apple Airport Extreme Base Station, a wi-fi networking solution that utilizes the newest IEEE 802.11n 5GHz wireless specifications (theoretically up to 5x faster over previous 802.11g wi-fi), and with the additional benefit of helping reorganize our home decor with its extra features.
Previously we had a Belkin ethernet router we hid away like Quasimoto in the bell tower, underneath a desk (whose unsightly presence was partnered well with the industrial design folly known as our Dell desktop), and whose performance and features left us unimpressed. The new Airport Extreme is not only fantastic because its minimal design blends in regardless where we place it (we like this Mac mini-inspired form factor than the previous UFO puck shape), whether out in plain view or hidden away, but also because the Airport Extreme has allowed us to share a single printer remotely between a desktop and a laptop. And using the Air Disk feature and a USB hub, my better half and I are also able to share an external USB drive (with a notable exception noted below). This means we've been able to move the printer and external drive from an already packed home office space once tethered to my desktop to an inconspicuous location in another room. That means less tech product in view...definitely a good thing when you want your Noguchi, not the Netgear, to be the center of attention in your home.
The beauty of any Apple product, and a great reason for the premium price ($179) compared to equally spec'ed 802.11n wireless competitors is the legendary ease of use and setup. We've owned previous Airport Extreme routers, and sadly it never played nice with our DSL connection, and the software was notoriously fickle. This time around, getting started was really a pleasurable process of plugging it in, installing the software, and pressing a few options through the Airport Utility software...and then voila...the sweet glory of wi-fi in our home with some extra bells and whistles that distinguish it from the pack. There's a USB port in the back of the Airport Extreme, which can be used with a forementioned USB printer(s) and/or external hard drive(s). Our HP printer showed up flawlessly in our printing options via Bonjour once plugged into the Extreme, and is now nestled in a corner shelf instead of precariously balancing ontop of our G5 desktop...a welcome improvement to our decor.
The glaring disappointment we've had is with the touted Air Disk feature. Although our portable Western Digital 80GB external drive shows up on both of our computers to use and share (we had plans to consolidate our ever growing collection of music onto a single shared external drive), the external 300GB SATA USB2 drive we had set aside for shared use isn't recognized by the utility for setup or use. We've formatted the drive according to directions in all the variants recommended, but only once did we see it appear in the Airport Disk Utility, and only for a moment before quickly disappearing into the ether. Even after following the various recommendations strewn across various Apple-related message boards, we've never been able to use the 300GB drive like the 80GB drive over the network. A shame, since the 80GB is too small for our combined musical assets. This seems to be an issue affecting a few users, so it seems Air Disk is a work in progress with a few kinks to work out with some eagerly awaited updates.
Otherwise performance has been fast, steady and reliable, regardless whether we placed it ontop of a bookcase or on the floor. Sometimes my girlfriend's MacBook's connection seems faster than my ethernet connected desktop (my older G5 doesn't have a wi-fi card installed...yet). Another benefit since switching over to the Airport Extreme is partnering it up with a dual mode VOIP (voice over IP) Skype phone solution (we'll save this option/review for another day), meaning we can plug in a VOIP phone directly into the router and not have to connect it/use it with a computer. For an everyday Joe, this has been an extremely satisfying migration from being bound by the limits of a wired connection, to now having the option of placing our myriad of computing and home electronics in areas that make far more sense for aesthetics and space efficiency. Despite some hiccups with the Air Disk feature, we still love our Airport Extreme, and can't wait to partner it up with the upcoming Apple TV for more wireless action.
Questions from a less technology-inclined reader: first, does this thingamajig work only with Macs or does it also jive with PCs? (If no to the latter, does such a thing exist for PCs?)
Second, do you find your printer speed is substantially reduced? We plugged our printer into our wireless router (which model we bought for this purpose) so we could easily share the printer (me on my laptop and him on his desktop) and found the printer to be so slow that now we plug directly into the printer when we want to use it.
Hi D in DC: Yes, this is PC compatible, and plays nice even in a mixed Mac/PC environment:
"AirPort Utility for Mac and Windows does most of the work for you by stepping you through the setup process quickly and easily."
Printer speed via USB on the Extreme base station is not noticeably any slower than when it was plugged directly into our USB port available on our desktop. Besides the noted Air Disk issue, it's been smooth sailing.
I just installed one of these in my house that has both macs and pc's! It works fine for both and the auto-mounted external hard drive features make this router that much better. My roommate and I can share are our music and media off one drive now.
i used to be a computer tech & i thought you wireless n00bs should know something. you need to enable your WEP security w/ these wireless devices. if you don't, anyone w/ a laptop can "war drive" your connection. most people use it to get free internet access & that'll only slow your connection down. HOWEVER, some people use it to anonymously download illegal things. you don't want that recorded on your ip. & depending on how wireless you go, they can do more. i know of some who have security cameras in their home & hooked up to the computer. this makes it easy for someone to look at what your cameras are filming & makes it easy you rob you. so, protect your stuff.
& DON'T JUST TURN THE WEP SECURITY ON. you need to change the password. all wireless routers come w/ a default password. most just use 2. any real nerd (including me) knows those passwords.
Yes, turn on security, but try to use the WPA or WPA2 which is much stronger than the older WEP.
We are seeing no hit on printing speed; in fact, our wireless laser Brother HL-5280DW (which is part of our wireless network via 802.11g) is noticeably faster than ever. An older HP-5850 inkjet (connected via Ethernet to the router) is as fast as ever.
We have no "n" devices to test, but all "b" and "g" devices (including PCs, Macs, and printers) are seeing a much stronger signal from the new router than we ever saw with our old Belkin. Also, our old Belkin had serious security issues, as its configuration web page (internally generated) could be easily hacked (and had been). Since Apple does not use a web page to configure the new router, it is more secure for that reason alone.
Of further note, the new router allows us to limit the times clients are able to access it. If you have kids, you don't need to be told how important that can be.
What is the brand/model of "the external 300GB SATA USB2 drive" that you had trouble with ?
Hi Mike:
It's a Seagate 300GB SATA 7200RPM Internal Drive with 16MB Cache inside a Metal Gear II USB enclosure. Works and mounts fine directly connected to both our MacBook and the G5 desktop, but will not mount via Base Station.
Did you try putting the 300GB drive into the 80GB drive's enclosure? Perhaps it's an issue with the enclosure's USB implementation or something, and switching enclosures might help.
SuperMatt: unfortunately the 80GB drive is one of the smaller 2.5" drive enclosures, while the 300GB drive is for a 3.5" size model. Can't do the ole switcheroo.
We're awaiting the arrival of our new Airport Extreme and are pleased to hear you haven't found any slow-down connecting printers. It'll be interesting to see if our Firewire-connected A3 Epson Stylus 2100 runs a lot slower over USB via the Airport.
I am somewhat worried about hard disk transfer rate slow-downs as I've seen benchmarks showing a significant performance hit. At least my 15" MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo will be able to support 802.11n speeds though my wife's older Core Duo MacBook running at G speeds may hinder that.
However, the sooner we see the back-end of our old Netgear WGR614, the better. :-)
-Mart
I found a website called www.applemountingbrackets.com who make a mounting bracket for the new apple airport extreme base station.
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I love the speed of Wireless-N but I LOATHE the Airport Extreme's inability to allow my household to use the external USB Air Disk utility. It shows up in the hard disk tab but no one can access it. Also, the network won't work on the 5Ghz wave so we have no choice but to utilize the 2.5Ghz.
We purchased this router specifically for the USB hardrive capabilities but it seems we wasted our money on this thing. It's a shame, as it's a beautiful peice of electronica, but it doesn't meet the needs it promised to.
Within the next week we are going to buy a home server to house our 16,000 song collection and to centralize all of our media. The Router may be sent back to Apple and we'll just purchase something a little more advanced that can be upgraded to true Wireless-N when the standard is finalized. $200 is a bit much to pay for something that is just draft and not final.
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