hi guys and gals,

It is time for me to buy a new router and I have been looking at the Airport Extreme and after getting a head ache looking for alternatives I thought I might ask for your suggestions and see what you guys are using.

My situation:
I live in a two story house with the router upstairs.
In the house there is a Powerbook, an iMac, a Mac Mini HTPC, and a Toshiba Laptop. None of these computers are N-enabled so the speed doesn't really make that much difference. Friends and family often bring their own laptops over and will access to the network and internet.

I currently use WEP and MAC address filtering security. The old netgear router doesn't support anything else.

The iMac and the Powerbook are usually connected by Ethernet. Apple not including Gigabeat Ethernet is annoying but really only a minor inconvenience.

I want to be able to share my Samsung Laser pritner across the network, however it is not a printer natively supported by OSX. I currently share it via the Powerbook and it required me to install drivers. Will the Airport Extreme support non-OSX-supported printers? If not I can always share it via the Mac Mini, it will just look damn ugly.

I also want to share external USB drives for backup and multimedia purposes. If I was to use the HDD with the printer together in a USB hub, will it slow the speed down to USB 1.0? (the printer is only USB 1.0)

Thanks in advance.

I'm using NetComm - see range here.

cheers,

cw

I'm using the N AirPort Extreme, great range, great speed and the AirPort Utility is superb.

I use an iConnect. Simple to use.