Final Thoughts on Airport Extreme

Here are some final thoughts on Airport Extreme (other thoughts are in part I, part II and part III).

First I think Apple could have sprung for 1000BaseT ethernet ports as opposed to 100BaseT ethernet ports. I can understand the rationale that people would not see any benefits if they are only accessing the internet or printing to a network printer, but any substantial computer to computer file transfers suffer, which put a dent on attaching a home based file server to the Airport.

Second, using Firewire as opposed to USB to attach a disc drive to the unit would have significantly improved the usability of the unit as a file server for multiple computers. While the throughput may be acceptable, I don’t get the impression that it will handle multiple machines streaming complex video.

Don’t get my wrong, it think it is a very good unit, and it has really helped with Wifi coverage in my home, but I wonder what the economics are of having 1000BaseT and Firewire included in the unit. My hunch is that it would have brought the unit close to the $200 mark, but I think that would have been worth it with those additions.

On the other hand, it does give Apple a place to go for the next version of the Airport Extreme…