Airport Express to extend a wired connection?

After reading through the Airport Express manual on the Apple site, I'm still not sure it will do what I want. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Issue:
My wife can work from home, but her employer has her laptop (XP of course) locked down and they disabled wireless so she can only connect with a wired connection. Works fine when she's at my desk plugged in to the router, but she wants the ability to work in other rooms in the house.

Proposed solution:
My thought is to buy an Airport Express, plug that into an outlet in the room she wants to work in, then plug her laptop into the ethernet port on the Express. From the documentation though, it only shows the ethernet port being used to plug the router/cable modem going IN to the Express. The only OUT connections they describe are the mini jack, USB and wireless.

In simpler terms, what I want is the Express to get the wireless signal from my router and use that to extend a wired connection in different room.

Will it work that way?

wont work. the ethernet port on the airport express is a WAN port, and is not a switch.

you need a second wireless router set to bridge mode.

Sorry oakie but I must disagree.

The setup described is pretty much what I do with my xbox 360. Just use the airport utility to connect the existing network.

For info: The Airport tech specs list the port as "One 10/100BASE-T Ethernet port for connecting a DSL modem, cable modem, or Ethernet network"
i.e. it's capable of being both a LAN and a WAN port.

oakie said:

wont work. the ethernet port on the airport express is a WAN port, and is not a switch.

you need a second wireless router set to bridge mode.

Click to expand...

That is NOT accurate. You can join your current wireless network (has to be with another Airport in WDS mode, or Extend Network if using "N") with the Airport Express and then plug in a network switch or a single PC into the Express's LAN port to share network connection to a non-wireless computer.

I use this setup to provide network connectivity to my daughters Airport-less iMac G3 and it works just fine.

thanks for the input...

If it was possible, I wanted to hear from somebody who is actually using it that way, and since a few of you are I'm going to give it a try.

Thanks again.

JS