Last night I picked up an Airport Extreme! I’m pretty excited. Set up was relatively easy. Below are some random observations so far because I love unordered lists.
- No more web based configuring like with my old Netgear, instead you use Airport Utility.
- In Airport Utility, “SSID” is listed as “Network Name.” And is it just me or does it seem confusing that there is something called “MAC Address” and it has nothing to do with Macs?
- Airport Utility shows who is connected and how much bandwidth they’re using in a neat little line graph.
- The Extreme’s access list setup also lets you choose what times devices can connect to the router.
- If you have an iPhone or any pre-N device like my Core-Duo MacBook, you can’t use the 5ghz frequency. You’re stuck with 2.4ghz like everyone else.
- Airport Disk is cool though I swear it was called “Airdisk”. I can’t wait to figure out how to access it from anywhere on the internet. Also, I don’t think you can change the name of the disk while connected to the Extreme.
- Time Machine through the Airport Disk seems to be working. I used the gigabit ethernet for my initial MacBook backup. I’ll let you know about the wireless-G backup experience after I work on some large files.
- I have an Ethernet card in my Epson 7600. My old version of EpsonNet 1.9a couldn’t find the printer through the Extreme, 2.2a could! I thought Epson was going to leave me behind again, but they didn’t.
- I have not used the built in print server.
So far it seems like a pretty solid router at a good price considering what you get: gigabit ethernet, wireless print server, NAS, Time Capsule-like Time Machine, wireless-N, and Apple support.
I’m not a jetsetter. I’m just a regular guy. I already have cable with the requisite wireless router. In my life, I’m in one of two places: home or work. I don’t even go to the local coffee shop all that often. Yet for some reason I still want to get an EVDO wireless data card.