Closing the airport
Today was a bittersweet change for my network setup here at home. I've had an original graphite Airport base station since very nearly the first day Apple introduced them, and it's one of the greatest peripherals I've ever owned, as it has enabled me to surf the web from many places I had previously only dreamed about - the sofa, the patio, the toilet, etc. You name it - I surfed from there.
A few years back, it suffered from the infamous defect where the capacitors had blown and it would enter a state of continuous reset. I had a friend in Austin who worked for Apple who did the repair for me for free, so it remained a happy and productive member of my household.
However, within the past few weeks, it'd gotten worse. It had a tendency to spontaneously reset if you were using it, roughly every 5 minutes or so. Sometimes you could go for an hour with no problem, but it gradually got worse. Yesterday, it entered the death spiral where it would reset. Sticking my ear up to the station, I could hear the caps hissing while it reset - a sure sign that death was near.
So last night, Beth and I went to CompUSA to get a replacement. Since she has an Airport Extreme(tm) card in her laptop, this would allow us a chance to upgrade, so it wasn't a total loss. However, Apple sells their new base stations for $249 at retail, which is pretty steep. CompUSA didn't have the $199 non-antenna version, so that wasn't an option. As it happens, Linksys sells a technically equivalent unit that also functions as a cable modem router, so I could replace my existing Linksys router with this and eliminate one piece of hardware, all for just $79. Que ganga! In theory, I could have further eliminated my cable modem with a 3-in-1 device, but it cost $179, and frankly, it didn't make sense for me to pay $100 more just so I could have one less piece of hardware.
Now I don't mind paying a premium for Apple stuff - it's generally well designed (with a few notable exceptions of first-gen stuff like my old Airport with the cap problem), but I was looking at a $170 price delta to get less functionality. I just couldn't bring myself to do it.
So I've retired the old Airport and am humming along with the new Linksys unit. It's not nearly as cool-looking, but it gets the job done.
Comments
I guess it's too late now, but...
Apple sells the AirPort Extreme Base Station (W/O 56K/Ext Antenna Connector) for $169.00 refurbished in the online store.
It's in the 'Sale' section all the way at the end of the page.
Posted by: Kay | April 7, 2004 06:28 AM
I had seen that, but the trouble is that we needed the base station replaced ASAP. Even so, that's $90 more expensive than what we ended with.
Posted by: Brad Oliver | April 7, 2004 11:02 AM
I've got to agree with your comments on the Apple base-stations. When they were first out, it was a new area, few alternatives, great looking and easy to setup. These days the AEBS's cost so much and have so less functionality compared to the plethora of other base-stations/routers out there (which for thoe most part have great web-based configuration) I'm amazed that they sell any.
Posted by: ben b | April 7, 2004 01:21 PM
This is a good reminder to us die-hard Apple folks that we sometimes pay over the odds for style rather than substance. On the other hand, I've been researching PCs as an alternative strategy-games machine, but there's nothing as functional as my movable screen iMac.
Posted by: Sid | April 7, 2004 02:21 PM
Happy birthday, you bastard.
Posted by: Corey Tamas | April 8, 2004 08:45 PM
Although apple makes some excelent equipment, the linksys WRT54G is quite possbly the best, cheapest option for a router that totally kicks ass. I have one and so do many of my friends. Havent been let down so far and I've had one since a few weeks after they came out.
Posted by: Crusher4 | April 14, 2004 09:34 PM
The Belkin is good too. Airport Extreme is way overpriced. If it was also a four port router I could see it but now as it stands now.
Posted by: Terry Thiel | May 1, 2004 09:45 AM