Apple Airport Express

Rating:

Cool start - some issues at the end.
Why apple prevents other applications from streaming the audio to the airtunes module is probably a dictatorship topic once more. Oh well. I heard the boxes break after two years but cannot tell yet. Is it capacitors on the power supply side? Anyway: Multi-Room speaker setup is great and easy. Why only iTunes can use it - NO IDEA!

Rating:

My Mac laptop is ten feet away from the Airport Express receiver which is attached to my stereo. When I play a song on iTunes, each and every minute the Airport Express will lose the signal for ten to fifteen seconds. I have line of sight between the laptop and the Airport Express and little chance of interference. Its not exactly the experience I was hoping for.

Rating:

Had a few annoying hiccups on initial set-up; I bought this to extend my network (using an Airport base station). A few more explicit explanations w/ the software would help. But once it was connected, I hooked up my TV and use the wireless for my PS3 downstairs; the base station is upstairs. Probably cheaper alternatives, but I'm a long-time Mac user (since 1984...), so prefer to go that route, if possible.

Rating:

I move every few years, and for the last three moves I've tried to set up my wireless network using Linksys and other routers with the new ISP when I move in. I don't know what it is with networking, but it has been consistently a frustrating and awful experience to just get even the most basic Wifi setup working. I'm plenty adept technically -- been using Unix/Linux for 20+ years and program for a living.

Last night I spent two hours trying to get my Linksys WRT54G router working. Just trying to set up a simple new network... no password, nothing fancy, just enough to login from my laptop. Total failure. I don't know what of the hundreds of settings was incorrect, but something was off. I reset all the defaults, read plenty of walkthrus, no success. I installed the open-source DD-WRT firmware and that ended up no better.

I gave up, spent a few bucks on this brilliant Apple Airport Express, plugged it in, and literally within 120 seconds of opening the box, I was done. It was SIMPLE SIMPLE SIMPLE! And it worked! I should have done this years ago!

I'm mostly going to use this as a regular Wifi router. It does more things, like running a printer remotely too, though I don't need that now. Streaming music throughout the house -- I set that up (two minutes), and it worked perfectly.

It's BRILLIANT and it WORKS. Just buy it!!

Rating:

Read a lot of the customer reviews on the product which kinda made me nervous especially running a FIOS supplied router. Did my setup with an ethernet cable directly to the router. Had to change my FIOS's default security method from WEP (64 bit) to WPAZ & that was it. Plugged in the Express behind my amp & connected them with the an optical cable & everything fired right up! I use the Express primarily for iTunes Radio. Just love Kenny Chesney's No Shoes Radio under the Raggae/Island stream.