I just purchased the new Apple Airport Extreme wireless router, and the first word that comes to mind is “neato.” It’s hard to get really excited about a wireless router, because it doesn’t really do anything cool like transform into a robot or anything. To honest, the best thing you can say about a wireless router is that “you never think about it.” If you’re not thinking about it, that means it’s doing it’s job. Like many appliances in your life, you take them for granted until they stop doing what they’re supposed to be doing. (Which is what happened to me. My 4+ year old D-Link Wireless Router died over the weekend.)
The Airport Extreme’s very easy to set up (like just about all Apple products) and like most Apple products, you get it setup and it just WORKS. I’m writing this post using the router after about 15min of setup. (If I didn’t configure it on my old eMac it would have taken even less time.) The feature that really sold me on the Apple Airport Extreme is that it supports printer and drive sharing. Using the USB port found on the back of the router, you can connect either a printer or a USB drive enclosure. (Both, if you have a USB hub handy.) This is a great little piece of computer equipment. At $180 it’s a little pricey, but the ease of use, and feature set make it worth it.