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For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Friday, July 16, 2004

AirPort Express arrives ... initial thoughts

My AirPort Express arrived today ("Designed by Apple in California; Assembled in Taiwan with other articles of foreign origin as marked thereon"). This is a device I really need on the road, but I'm curious how others will use it (probably as a primary base station, I guess). In the guise of seeing how it works, I tried to set it up here today.

I tried first from my main Windows laptop, which is wirelessly connected. I have three wireless networks at home; two are 54g (one 54g only and one 54g/11b shared) and one is 802.11b only. According to the AirPort Setup, I might have problems because a third party application is controlling the wireless functionality (which isn't the case, actually), and sure enough, I had problems: Windows couldn't see the AirPort Express at all. It just wouldn't work. I'll try from other Windows machines later.

So I moved to the Mac. Unlike the Windows version, ironically, the Mac setup application required a reboot (ahem). After reboot, however, it found the AirPort Express (APX) no problem. There are a number of options you get when setting up the APX. You can create a new network, connect to an existing network, or extend an existing network. I wanted to try the latter, but it requires a feature called WDS (Wireless Distribution Service), which Apple supports on their AirPort devices. My routers either don't have this feature (in the case of the Microsoft 54g and 11b units), or, can't work because they don't broadcast their SSID (with my Linksys 54g unit) and the APX setup program offers no way to connect to a wireless network that doesn't broadcast its SSID. Hey, way to go guys.

So I chose the second option, connect to an existing wireless network, and that works. I guess. Because I haven't yet tried plugging a USB printer or analog audio cable into the little box, I can't really say for sure. I'll do that after I get some work done this morning.

So the short version goes like this: A little buggy on Windows, a little under-developed software-wise, but decent. I'll try and test it more later today and over the weekend, but I'm not hugely disappointed so far.

UPDATE: Kyle tells me that a second bundled AirPort configuration utility will let me connect to non-broadcasting base stations. I'll try that, but this stuff should be a lot more clear.

[ Posted at 10:19 AM | Permalink ]