Airport Express Mini Review
I recently bought a new Airport Express 802.11n from Apple and got rid of my 3-year old D-Link router, my first impression was, how come I didn’t do this long time ago. The truth is that it was on my mind but since the D-Link DI-524 was working ok, I was just waiting on it to die.
While it didn’t die I purchase a used PowerBook G4 and I was having issues connecting, sometimes losing the signal after being connected for awhile. That was enough to make me go out and get one of those new Airport Express, and it works like magic. I had a small hiccup when I first connected because I told the setting to connect to the existing network, which was already disconnected (my D-Link.) I had to reset the Airport Express delete the connection profile from my Mac mini and create a new one for the Airport Express.
Ever since its been working fine, no drop connection on my PowerBook G4, reliable connections on both my iPhone and my wife’s iPhone and my Mac mini is running using the internal 802.11g antenna. The four devices work great but what impressed me the most was the ease of configuring one of my printers to work with the Airport Express.
I have two printers, one is a Canon MX-310 which I got when I purchase my Mac mini on September and a Brother HL-2040 that I bought over a year ego. I connected the Brother printer to share it on my wireless connection and its working great too, my excuse to do this as opposed to have it connected directly onto the Mac mini is so that my PowerBook G4 can print even if the Mac mini is off. Using printer sharing options, I was able to share the Canon printer but only when the Mac mini is on.
I already made some changes on my Airport Express unit, I set the DNS addresses to point to OpenDNS, which is a must for me. I set up my encryption scheme to use WPA with a HEX key (personal preference,) and changed my SSID to something that identifies the unit less to prevent curious people to try to hack my router just because is a Mac router (you know, haters.)
At $99, I think the Airport Express is a great router, while most people see it as an extension to a network I think it performs wonderfully as a single router. As an added bonus, this router is using 802.11n which will be good in the future as I transition to new machines. If you are having issues with your Airport Express or you just love yours, leave a comment on this post, share your experience with the community. Thanks for reading.
