airport, or airport express?

basically for university I plug my laptop into the wall for Internet. Because my mbp will be going around with me all the time I don't want to have to plug everything in. Basically I have 2 external hard drives and iPhone to plug in aswell as a network cable. Do I get airport express or extreme? Thanks.

I asked my apple store about the express, but they were disappointed with its range. It wasn't very stable. The extreme on the other hand has a much wider range and is much more powerful (three antennas?)...

I still am very interested in the express though, specially cause it is cheap and it has Airtunes...

hmmm to be honest I would only keep it under my desk ( two to three feet). And the air tunesis one of the more attractive features on it. Basically will it beagle to Handel 2 hard drives on a USB bus?

I still can't say. And the apple site doesn't mention any HDD attachment to that USB port. They only mention Printer though I would assume that a HDD would work as well.

I'm pretty sure they are going to be upgrading it to 'n' though...along with some anodized aluminum... the white look is going...

The Express doesn't do HDD via USB, only the Extreme does.

One would hope that when the Express next is updated that this will be added, but who knows.

mark.spiro said:

basically for university I plug my laptop into the wall for Internet. Because my mbp will be going around with me all the time I don't want to have to plug everything in. Basically I have 2 external hard drives and iPhone to plug in aswell as a network cable. Do I get airport express or extreme? Thanks.

Click to expand...

You can use the Airport Extreme to plug in both of your hard drives and then access them over wifi, in addition to the Internet. If you have a printer, you can plug that in as well. If you use an Airport Express, you lose the hard drive functionality but gain the AirTunes feature, which is really nice. You also drop from 802.11n to 802.11g, which may or may not be a big deal for you. The Airport Extreme has better range due to the 802.11n, plus it has Gigabit ports in case you ever want to do some local networking.

I have both. I just got an Airport Extreme with Gigabit for home use to replace my existing router. I mainly got it for the 802.11n plus the Gigabit. I also have an Airport Express. It's nice if you want to hook up your speakers to use in a different location than where your computer is. It's also nice if you travel...I actually use it as my travel router when I go on business trips and vacations. If you're in a different part of your university and want a wireless connection, it can be handy for that as well. Plus there's a great $25 app called Airfoil that will let you pipe any audio from your computer to an Airport Express or to multiple Airport Express units.

http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/

Make sure you get the student discount when you purchase your networking equipment, it can save you a few bucks. If I were you I would get both, if you can afford it. You can have the Airport Extreme setup as your primary router and attach both of your external hard drives (plus a printer if you have one), then tether the Airport Express to hook your speakers into. This is nice if you want to listen to speakers in the kitchen, living room, or bedroom and control it from your laptop. Plus you can take the Express on the go with you!

Great, thanks for the help, I'm going to go with the Extreme. Also, can I use Extreme for say, the HDDs and network, but the Express for music at the same time? That would be expensive, but ideal.

Yes, you can.

Brill. thanks.