When I was in Aspen in December, I once again found myself sitting in a house with Internet access (via DSL) but without wireless. This time there were only three of us competing for the Internet cable but that was two too many. We all had wireless adapters in our computers so we grumbled to each other that there must be a better way.
I was determined to find an inexpensive, portable, easy to set up Internet wireless base station. My primary computer is a Windows box so I went through all the logical network gear vendors. Everything I saw was big, bulky, or stupid looking. For some reason I wandered over to the Apple site and took a look at the Apple AirPort Express with Air Tunes
I installed it tonight. It took 15 minutes and had only one issue – the CD-ROM installer choked during the install on my Windows computer because I had a “new version of iTunes.” While that’s a stupid error, it was easy to fix by going to the Apple site, downloading the latest version of AirPort 4.2 for Windows, and installing again.
The setup was trivial and completely obvious. The only tricky thing to know is that if you want to have an encrypted network that both Macs and PCs can access, you need to use WEP, which requires exactly a 13 character password (yeah – good luck – it took a little while to come up with a 13 character password I could remember.)
While I’ve only tried this at home, it worked exactly as expected. As a result, the Apple AirPort Express with Air Tunes gets Toy of the Month status.
Posted in: ReviewsCOMMENTS (5)
I had no trouble using WPA Personal to connect both Windows XP and Mac. You need at least Mac OS X v10.3, though.
This little box is a gem.
Note that there is a recent firmware upgrade (6.3).
Definitely. I take it with me whenever I travel. Perfect for hotel use.
Agreed, this is a great device. When our cd changer broke, the thought of buying a new one led me to look into playing my music off our home PCs. While there are other solutions, this $90 purchase off ebay is all I needed to use my current receiver and speakers.
You can also create an ad-hoc wireless network and use Internet Connection Sharing on the laptop that's connected with the wire. Then you don't have to carry around any extra hardware.
Toy of the month, how old is Airport Express? Anyway, cheak out "Airfoil" essential app of the month to go with your new toy.
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