NT tried to deliver the Airport Extreme today, but Adele was out, so I had to go and pick it up from the Depot which is about 10 miles away.
Of course it was packaged exquisitely, Apple had taken the usual amount of time and care to design the packaging, quality all over.
So I whacked it together and plugged it in, I could tell from the LED that it wasn't happy, it should be solid Green and it was flashing Amber.
I threw the CD into the Powerbook, and proceeded to install the software, at least I would have installed the software if the installer had worked, it didn't, it said that both iTunes and the Airport software were disabled.
Right, I said, I'll just do it in Windows. I put the CD in, installed the software, fired up the Airport Setup Assistant, and set about installing the Airport, except that even though the PC was connected to a wireless router, it wanted the PC to be wireless.
My next step was to search the Apple website for help, support showed that there was a newer version of airport software, so I downloaded it and installed it.
Bingo, I could finally run the software and connect it with my wireless network. This was problem number three, the software is quite specific about only allowing you to connect to an existing Airport network, or starting a new Airport network. I have a perfectly good Linksys Router, which cost £90 less that the Apple Airport base station. At this point I was a little miffed as nowhere did it say that this would only work with Airport.
I set up the Airport anyway, and then set off for the web in search of other people who had connected Airport Extreme to a standard 802.11g network.
Luckily, quite high up the list within google was This Link which showed me how it could be done quite easily.
I dived into the Airport Admin application and after hooking the Airport Express up to the router, it appeared. a Quick change in the settings to add it to the Linksys' wireless network and we were all hooked up.
I then moved the Airport Express from the office down to the Conservatory, plugged it in and connected a pair of speakers.
I then proceeded to stream from both my XP machine and the Powerbook upstairs, the quality was excellent. I could also stream from the PC downstairs, and because of iTunes built in ability to share libraries, I could use the downstairs machine to stream the library on the upstairs Windows XP PC to the Airtunes speakers.
For me though, the interesting thing in this is whether the Upstairs PC streams the library to the PC which then streams what it's playing to the Airport Express or if it's clever enough to minimise the use of the Wireless network by streaming straight from the PC library upstairs to Airtunes, doubt I'll ever find out.
I've got to say that It seems you can only stream to one Airtunes set of speakers at once, and I'd have thought one of the benefits would be the ability to stream to a few different sets.
All in all I'm very, very impressed, yes it's overpriced, I'd say that somewhere around £50 would be more realistic, I'd certainly buy another if the price point was there.
Of course it was packaged exquisitely, Apple had taken the usual amount of time and care to design the packaging, quality all over.
So I whacked it together and plugged it in, I could tell from the LED that it wasn't happy, it should be solid Green and it was flashing Amber.
I threw the CD into the Powerbook, and proceeded to install the software, at least I would have installed the software if the installer had worked, it didn't, it said that both iTunes and the Airport software were disabled.
Right, I said, I'll just do it in Windows. I put the CD in, installed the software, fired up the Airport Setup Assistant, and set about installing the Airport, except that even though the PC was connected to a wireless router, it wanted the PC to be wireless.
My next step was to search the Apple website for help, support showed that there was a newer version of airport software, so I downloaded it and installed it.
Bingo, I could finally run the software and connect it with my wireless network. This was problem number three, the software is quite specific about only allowing you to connect to an existing Airport network, or starting a new Airport network. I have a perfectly good Linksys Router, which cost £90 less that the Apple Airport base station. At this point I was a little miffed as nowhere did it say that this would only work with Airport.
I set up the Airport anyway, and then set off for the web in search of other people who had connected Airport Extreme to a standard 802.11g network.
Luckily, quite high up the list within google was This Link which showed me how it could be done quite easily.
I dived into the Airport Admin application and after hooking the Airport Express up to the router, it appeared. a Quick change in the settings to add it to the Linksys' wireless network and we were all hooked up.
I then moved the Airport Express from the office down to the Conservatory, plugged it in and connected a pair of speakers.
I then proceeded to stream from both my XP machine and the Powerbook upstairs, the quality was excellent. I could also stream from the PC downstairs, and because of iTunes built in ability to share libraries, I could use the downstairs machine to stream the library on the upstairs Windows XP PC to the Airtunes speakers.
For me though, the interesting thing in this is whether the Upstairs PC streams the library to the PC which then streams what it's playing to the Airport Express or if it's clever enough to minimise the use of the Wireless network by streaming straight from the PC library upstairs to Airtunes, doubt I'll ever find out.
I've got to say that It seems you can only stream to one Airtunes set of speakers at once, and I'd have thought one of the benefits would be the ability to stream to a few different sets.
All in all I'm very, very impressed, yes it's overpriced, I'd say that somewhere around £50 would be more realistic, I'd certainly buy another if the price point was there.
Comments
Post a Comment