[Ti] Question: Airport Extreme vs. original Airport?

[Michael Bigley]

>In my former home, I had 2 original edition Apple Airport Stations, one at
>each end of my house. If I was to upgrade to the newest Airport Extreme
>Stations, what would be the advantages over the original Airport stations I
>own?

The greatest advantage would be the wireless printing ability; I just 
put an Airport Extreme network in a home and the wireless printing 
feature is pretty sweet (though it works through Rendezvous, so all 
macs must be running Jag to take advantage of it.)

It also has 2 ethernet ports; one to feed in from broadband 
connection and one network port to connect to a non-wireless network 
or computer; one of the computers on the home network I set up was a 
Wallstreet running OS9. By plugging it straight into the Airport 
ethernet, the Airport assigned it an IP via DHCP just as it did the 
wireless devices.


>
>Higher speed?

Using existing Airport cards in your Macs you won't notice much speed 
difference

>
>Greater range?

Not with the standard set up, though the Extreme has a port for an 
external antenna, which would greatly increase your range, depending 
on how much you want to spend for an antenna.  The range for the 
Airport Extreme with 802.11g is only 50 feet... with 802.11b it is 
150 feet.

>
>Would it be worth it?

Can you get access everywhere you need with the existing Airports? 
(if no, then the Airport Extreme with an external antenna may be the 
way to go)
Would you like to be able to print to one printer from many Macs?
Do all of your computers have Jag running?

If you answered yes to the last 2 questions, then remember, without 
an external antenna, you will probably have to buy to of the new 
Airports as well.

On a side note: We also hooked up a crappy hp laptop with a Linksys 
wireless pc card, but it wouldn't connect to the airport with WEP 
enabled.  Worked fine when the network was open though.  The computer 
was running Windoze ME and an hour on the phone with Linksys tech 
support ended with them saying the Airport wasn't doing WEP 
properly... Since we only needed to copy files from there to a new 
12in powerbook, I just temporarily disabled WEP.

And for those of you who need "switch" ammo, this HP laptop was 
purchased at the same time I purchased my Ti500, for the same price 
as my Ti500; it has no ethernet, no CDRW... but it does have a 
parallel port and a floppy drive ;-)   When people start talking 
price of Macs vs. PCs this is a great example of how they are really 
comparing Apples to "road apples"

-- 
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Mike Bigley                Maineville, Ohio
       http://www.norbertrunning.com
Please support an American Indian Elder &
Medicine Man by visiting the above link.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>