Apple Intros New AirPort Extreme with 802.11n

[SOCOMRAIDER]

All the more reason it has a hard drive to provide a bigger and better buffer. It will store a more vast amount until it starts playing. So yes there will be a delay at first. But as long as the transfer rates are fine, it should work fine with wireless G. After all Apple has said all you need is G or N to run video. I assume that is the reason the hard drive is in the unit to begin with.
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[UP75]

I'm trying to decide between the Linksys WRT350N and the new Airport Extreme. To be honest, I'm a little concerned about lack of external antennas on the Apple. I know it is way better looking than the Linksys, but I wonder if its range on the same level? How does the current AirPort base station do when it comes to range?

[buzzardj]

Having struggled with some other consumer-level NAS (network attached storage) devices, I think I'll be buying one of these to try out.

It's the same width and depth as the mini so I'll take some spare minimate and ministack drives I have and stack the AE on top - the drives have built in USB hubs so there will be plenty of USB ports for connecting other drives and potentially printers.

This should, assuming the Airport Disk software works as MacWorld describes it, make a neat and easy solution to adding storage to the home LAN. The Apple management software will likely be worlds beyond the web-based management tools NAS boxes usually give you.

And the MacWorld review also claims it will let you auto-mount the shared drives on startup as if they were locally attached - I can do this in Windows but haven't found an easy or free means (other than DAVE at $119 a seat) to do it under OS X.

It does suck that they omitted Gigabit Ethernet - it would have made it much better as a NAS solution. A Firewire port would be great too but then it is only $ 179. Hopefully the disk-to-network performance will be good.

[Pleiades]

[buzzardj]

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

I'll try this out soon if I can talk my wife into letting me screw around with her powerbook - unfortunately my Mini died this morning (I'm a switcher and only have one mac so far - everything else, 5 of them, is a ThinkPad) - oddly it wouldn't come back ferom sleep, didn't respond to the power button and then I pulled the power pull - and the light on the front of the Mini continued to glow. Eventually the power light on the mini went dead (5 min? Is this normal???) and I tried pulling it back in but now it won't start at all - no power light, no sound, nothing.

I'm off to the genius bar at the local Appl store this afternoon but as I only paid $275 for this mini (used G4 1.5Ghz, 1GB) I'm not sure it is worth repairing. And I can't resell it as is since my confidential info is on the embedded hard drive - I guess I'll have to strip it.

I have to say these Mini are really poorly designed from a maintenance standpoint - the ThinkPads let you easily swap optical and hard drives, add hard drives (one of my A30s has three of them) change memory, bluetooth, and network cards - they all (I have 2000 to early 2006 models) use the same power supplies even. I appreciate the clean design of the Minis (and my wife's 12" powerbook) but I think Apple needs to rethink the design of everythign except the Mac Pro if they want to sell into business (if they do - who knows). At least you can swap the hard drives on the Mac Books easily.

[buzzardj]

This works great but I have one more (possibly stupid) question:

Is there a way to tell finder to not open a new window when mounting a network share? i,.e. I want it to mount the share but just put it into the sidebar list, not open a window for the share. I found some Automator script ideas that could likely do this on macosxhints and I'm assuming that you can run Automator scripts as a login item (as an Application?) but was wondering if there was a simplier way.

Thanks again for your help on this!

[Pleiades]

Not a stupid question, as it's a valid complaint with my method. My method is probably the simplest, but it does result in an open Finder window.

As you found, an Automator action (or possibly Applescript, or a shell script) run at login, might be the best way to avoid the open Finder window.
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MacBook Pro 1.83GHz Core Duo, 2GB RAM, 250GB HD, Dell 802.11n card, 1.4TB external
MacBook 1.83GHz Core Duo, 2GB RAM, 60GB HD
iMac 1.83GHz Core Duo, 2GB RAM, 160GB HD, 1TB external, EyeTV Hybrid

[jfgreco]

If you share a multifunction printer via the USB on the airports is it just for printing or can it still scan and stuff?

[bwanac]

anyone using this with a ministack v2 or the like?

seem to complement each other real well minus the color difference. same dimensions and stackable. nice! i will be doing this route instead of a NAS.