Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station With Gigabit Ethernet

Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station With Gigabit Ethernet

AirPort Extreme Base Station With Gigabit Ethernet Review, by Becky Waring, PC World April 30, 2008

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• Reviewed by: janderson109

  Strengths: Good signal, which is the reason I purchased it. My husband can now get a good signal anywhere in the house (which has plaster walls) with his laptop. Couldn't before.

  Weaknesses: None really -- see comment below.

  Overall: The only slight negative (not really a negative) is that the Air Port Extreme takes a few seconds to connect. My computer (an iMac) scans for a few seconds before it connects. So if I unsleep my computer I find I need to wait several seconds before hitting "Get Mail." If I don't wait, it says "can't find server" or something similar. This was not the case with my former router.

• Reviewed by: davelin

  Strengths: Best looking network equipment; strong, stable, reliable wireless signal; combines wireless and wired network routing; enables network access of printer and hard drive through USB; PC compatible

  Weaknesses: Can not access A band and B/G bands simultaneously

  Overall: Only Apple seems to understand that consumer technology products can be both functional AND beautifully designed. I'm not quite sure why this is... Nevertheless, you can expect both great performance and elegant design to come with your Airport Extreme wireless router.

• Reviewed by: macoxp

  Strengths: N network speed. Easy setup. Printer and hard drive server.

  Weaknesses: Does not support port triggering.

  Overall: This is the best router I have ever owned (I have 16 old ones sitting in my closet). I set it up in about 30 mins total. 2 macs and 1 pc on the network. All work great no problems. I have a harddrive and a printer hooked up at once with a usb hub. I opted out of installing the bornjour drivers on my xp machine and decided to do it manually. Only took 3 mins or so and was up and running on xp no problem, no extra drivers needed. Check this link for how i did it. http://tech.ifelix.net/1004.htmlThe macs just worked nothing to install.Also I get full bars all through my house now where as before my back bedroom was a dead zone. Only draw back is this does not support port triggering for bittorrent. But it does have port forwarding so i just used that.Moral of the story spend the little extra money on this one and you will be happy. and if you are running windows dont install bornjor it's not needed and just messes things up.

• Reviewed by:

  Strengths: Used to be great now a paper weight only wired parts work

  Weaknesses: Wireless slowly fails then goes away completely

  Overall: Long list of problems that apple won't fix. Go to http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1222416&tstart=0 and make your own choice! Mine stated to drop out a lot then set it on it's side (overheating?) Now after 7 months it is just dead. Wireless does not work at all. Works great as a wired router switch!

• Reviewed by: ramuman

  Strengths: 802.11n, decent software, good features

  Weaknesses: AirDisk over WAN doesn't workCost

  Overall: This is a solid router at the usual Apple premium. The price gets you a good router with software that is impressive. You can monitor quite a few stats including signal parameters for individual wireless clients etc. The features match and in some cases exceed the other 802.11n routers out there. However, AirDisk is a pain if you aren't using a Mac and even worse if you aren't the same network. I have been unable to setup AirDisk (which also doesn't support NTFS) to be accesible over a WAN with either a Mac or PC.