Apple AirPort Extreme Base (MA073LL/A) 802.11a/b/g Wireless Access Point

Thus far, after about two weeks of use, this is the best wireless access point I've ever owned (I've tried 3 others over the years).

Wireless "N" is the newest generation of latest-and-greatest wifi, offering greater speeds and twice the range of the previous generation, wireless "G." I bought this unit to replace a Linksys wireless G access point which utterly failed me - flaky connections that would go on and off all the time.

I've had NONE of those problems with Apple's Airport Extreme thus far and the speeds are definitely improved. Everyone in the house agrees: the new wireless works great. We've got two apple laptops with wireless N support built in, but also two PCs that have wireless G cards. Those also work fine with reliable connectivity and improved speed. Lastly, our TiVo uses a wireless connector and it is also very happy with the new access point.

At first, I had a little trouble making it work. But it turned out to be an issue of placement. I had it right next to a television (as well as the TiVo's wireless transmitter) and one room in our pad became a dead spot. I moved it to a less cluttered location and things worked just fine. There are good printed directions on how to place your airport with relation to furniture and such.

I'm in an 1100 square foot, one-floor condo which is laid out in a long/narrow configuration. We had significant problems with distance using our old wireless G access point. One end of the house was always on the losing end of the stick.

It's not a very large residence but this is the first time I feel we've got good coverage throughout. And Apple makes it easy to extend with their Airport Express product. That product is a little white box you just plug into the wall. It can act as its own access point to your internet provider, or a simple bridge to extend your existing network (although it is only wireless G). It also does some neat music streaming but that's for another review I guess.

The software config in the Airport Extreme doesn't provide some of the nifty bells and whistles you'll get with Linksys or other products. It's got the standard stuff like security, some controls for how DHCP will work, the ability to open network ports. I was able to get BitTorrent set up right away. But some of the other junk like setting up time of day rules for different network access schemes and other advanced stuff does not appear in the screens of Apple's admin utility. If something critical is missing, I'm not aware of it, but serious geeks may scoff at the basics-only approach Apple took. Personally, I think people generally WANT wireless to be simple.

Don't get me wrong though. This is more than an access point that just works really well. There are some great and distinctive features too. The Airport Extreme has a USB port on it. What do you plug into that? Well, your printer, if you want to be able to share it. Or a hard disk drive for all your Macs to use as a file server. In Apple's upcoming Leopard version of OSX, you'll be able to set all the Macs in the house to automatically back up to such a disk. Very cool.

Overall: solid performance, great range and speed, setup was no harder than it should have been (it's hard for me to judge that because I have some experience with this and it's possible that a newbie would find it hard or confusing). I'm looking forward to Leopard so I can get that automatic backup going.

Oh yeah, the Airport Extreme is also very attractive. Clean-looking white box. But the always-on green light is pretty bright. The thing is on my nightstand right now and I need to keep something in front of it so the light doesn't keep me awake.