So I've been looking into some backup solutions for my wife's graphic design work with her recent Hackintosh and I need a router that supports 'N' as my current was one of the first 'G' units (heh) so I thought two birds, one stone.

So Apple has the Airport Extreme which gets very high grades and from my limited experience is dirt simple to use. But then there is the Time Capsule which gets all sorts of one star reviews, 18 months after purchase it simply won't function and all data is lost. That makes me a little hesitant. Should I just buy an extra hard drive and make it the time machine drive for her?

Decisions..

 

Is there any reason to have the time machine drive sit on a network? If not, just get the airport and do a usb/firewire/esata local to the hackintosh.

 

No reason (yet) but I did get a Mac Mini recently.. so who knows? I might chug the entire pitcher of Kool-Aid soon enough

 

I have the Airport Extreme at home....No problems in 2 yrs. Love the Mac....you know you want to.

 

I would love to get a timecapsule...but only because of the two laptops at home. Makes it much easier to not have to think about it.

Otherwise, on my imac I use a drobo for specific files and a dedicated external for time machine for a full back up.

So, I just use the airport extreme at the moment.

 

Throw the drive on the mac mini and back up through that... Get a copy of OS X Server and be a pimp.

 

It may be cheaper to get a NAS that supports Time Machine instead of Time Capsule. You will get more use out of the NAS. You could store your movies there and stream to the mini.

I don't see anything special about Airport Extreme to justify its cost over other N routers. But if you like the style and the whole "Apple Experience" then I'm not going to tell you not to buy it.

 

Well I think I'll just get the Airport Extreme and an external drive so she can take it wherever. Thanks guys, appreciate it.

 

Actually I take that back. The dual band frequency and guest network are nice features. $50 cheaper in the refurb store too. Maybe I will get one in the summer. Posting from my just received refurb iPad.

 

My wife has the magic ability to break things with her mere presence. I have never seen computers, programs, electronics and even car stereos simply crash/die like they do around her. So I want something easy and quite frankly, idiot-proof to use

 

Sounds like your wife has the same relationship with electronics as my Dad does.

 

Yeah, don't get me started on my wife vs. my RL's navigation

 

I saw the same bad reviews regarding Time Capsule. So I just bought Airport Extreme and an external hard drive.

 

This thread got me thinking. My Netgear WNDR3700 is a dual band router too. So I assumed my 2010 MBP must be dual-band if the AE is. Did a little research and found out if you configure the AE 5Ghz band with the same SSID and password as the 2.4GHz band then the MBP will join 5GHz automatically.

I configured my Netgear the same way and it worked! I then transferred 6GBs of files from my MBP to my mini server over the 5GHz Wifi (server is connected using GBe) and I was getting transfer speeds of 15mb/s!

Normal 100mbps fast ethernet has a theoretical transfer limit of 12mb/s so I'm glad to be getting actual transfer speeds higher than theoretical Fast ethernet speeds!

 

Ok, time for a new router.

To Airport Extreme or not Airport Extreme.....that is the question.


I recently moved into a larger house, will the Airport Extreme give that much better coverage?

My current router is a piece of so no need for a comparo here.

My top needs:
Range
Speed
Ease of use.

All my devices are apple with only one PC that will be wired directly into the router and not wifi.


Your thoughts?

Should I take the 200 dollar plunge? Is it worth it?

Thanks

 

I cant speak for the new antenna design in the in the revamped "tower" models.

I have an older time capsule and I get decent coverage out of it...but depending on the size of your home and the location of the extreme you might want to add an express as well to extend the coverage.

 

They say the new design gives fantastic coverage and speed. Plus will give you room to grow into AC devices.

The Airports are also extremely easy to use. Especially with all your devices primarily being Apple.

The single thing keeping me from buying one is they removed dDNS support.

IMO the capsules are way over priced. I'd rather run my own NAS.

 

I think for $200 I would buy a cheaper non-Apple router and a second, even cheaper router and turn it into a repeater and have about $75 to blow on something else.

You may not think so, though.

 

Get one.

 

Does the express setup as a separate network with separate login, or can it be assigned the same network name as the Extreme with the same login?

I have a wireless extender, and it identifies as a separate network with a separate login. A bit of a pain.

 

I dont remember exactly as its been awhile since Ive used one.

 

If you extend the network from the extreme and its the same wifi network and key.

 

Awesome....thanks.

 

I can confirm this is the case. I have the new Time Capsule that's the "tower" version along with a new MBA so I'm on AC now. It's pretty darn fast, but I can't speak to coverage since I live in an 800sqft condo.

 

indeed. I have two 2011-ish Airport Extremes. It covers a good amount of space, a solid connection 100 feet in every direction.

 

I just bought the new AP extreme. Works just fine, better thruput than the "older" models. No AC wireless to test.

 

I have two n-1 versions and one of the current rev.

 

So I got the extreme.

Works flawlessly. Speed is noticeably faster, and range is improved.

However, range is not quite enough...close, but not quite enough to get to the far reaches of the house.

My plan is to get and express for the far end of the house, and connect it to a powerline ethernet adaptor (the other pair of the powerline ethernet adaptor plugged into the extreme)

Thoughts?

 

^if you don't need to speed of wired, I would just get an express and use it to extend the existing network. No need for powerline adapters.

 

Play around with both. Some houses need both the powerline and the airport express.

 

I need the speed that the powerline adapter brings...gotta stream media from that location....don't wanna kill the speed by just adding the express without the hard line.