Apple AirPort Express Base Station with AirTunes > Reviews > A wireless extension of you mac!

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Fast
Ease of Installation	Excellent - very quick and easy
Ease of use	Very easy
Reliability	Excellent
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Lightweight, small, works first time (as always)
Disadvantages:	Expensive

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Well, you either use a mac or you don't. However if you do, it's a slippery slope into buying loads of things for your mac. There's all sorts of things you can buy, some which are trivial little things, some which aren't.

I first bought the Apple Airport Express around 6 months ago. Not entirely sure why, as my Mac Mini PC was located next to my ADSL modem and also my HiFi. So, it was definitely in the 'Trivial Purchases' Catergory.

However, now I use it with my MacBook pro, it's now in the 'Must Have' catergory.

So, why do you need one? Well, I'll tell you.

Portability:
It is small, and much smaller than a regular access point. It doesn't have a ADSL modem built in, but that's not a problem for me. So, why does it need to be portable? Well, I take it everywhere with me and just plug it into people's modems and networks. For example, I travel with work, and plug this into the network cable you normally get in hotel rooms, allowing me to get wireless access in the hotel room. Also, I'm currently at my parents. I've plugged it into my mums ADSL modem and it worked first time

Airtunes:
Airtunes works on iTunes on the Mac (and I think it 'may' work on XP iTunes also). You plug either an optical or analogue lead from the Airport Express into your HiFi and from iTunes you can then direct the music into your HiFi from anywhere in the house!

Printing:
It also allows you to plug in a USB printer, allowing printing from anywhere in the home.

So, Mac's are famous for ease of setup. How did this compare? Well, my first attempt resulted in it going nowhere. I could access it, and set it up, but it didn't like my D-Link ADSL modem. However, it's worked on all sorts of things since.

So, using the Airport Express utility that comes with Mac OS X, you should have your Airport Express setup within a minute (and that includes wifi security!). It's really that simple and is wizard driven.

Other devices: The airport works well with both my mobile phone and my XP powered fujitsu laptop.

Problems / Issues:
You can only configure this using a Mac. There's probably a way of doing it from XP but I haven't found it.

The range isn't too good either. However, this was vastly improved by spending £10 on a Griffin holder for it (available from amazon, etc).

iTunes: Well, you can only stream from iTunes at the moment. However, there's a utility available called AirFoil which allows you to use ANY mac app to transfer the music.

Support:
There are many forums available for the Airport, one of which is on the apple web site

The technical details for the AirPort Express are available from the apple website. However, the important things are that it supports 802.11b and g.