An Airport Extreme Base station from Apple is $199<br><br>A 802.11g wireless router from Dell costs $89<br><br>I know Dell will make deals with the devil to undercut competition, but this is ridiculous. There must be something that the Airport does that the Dell thing doesn't, right?<br><br>

???<br><br>

No Rendezvous-based USB Print Server.<br>No AOL Support.<br>No RADIUS Login support.<br>No Cisco whatever-they-call-their-authentication-protocol support.<br>I don't think those can be part of a larger airport network either.<br><br>Apple's router really is much better than the competition. Unfortunately most people don't need all of those features. (Most of those extras were for schools, I would imagine) I bought the Apple station because of the USB print server. Otherwise, I would have gotten a Linksys or Netgear or whatever.<br><br><br><br>

Thanks Hayesk. Hmmm... those don't seem like anything I would use. Couldn't you just use the printer sharing features in the control panels for USB printing anyway?<br><br>Well, if I decide to get one I think I'll look around at those other brands (the Dell isn't an option anyway, says it supports only Windows) Do you have any advice for non Apple routers and maybe where to shop?<br><br>

"Couldn't you just use the printer sharing features in the control panels for USB printing anyway"<br><br>Well, sort of, but the printer has to be connected to a Mac, and that Mac has to be turned on in order to print. With the Airport Basestation, the printer is plugged into the basestation and I can print from any Mac since the basestation is always on anyway. Basically, it all boils down to I don't need to turn my desktop on when I print.<br><br>As for 3rd party brands - Netgear or Linksys are pretty good and can be bought pretty much anywhere. I had a Linksys router (no wireless) before I bought the airport cards for my iBooks - it worked very well.<br><br>

Great, thanks.<br><br>

There are some cool new products around, which include the ADSL modem and the WiFi router in one for the price of an Airport base station. If interested I can look it up for you.<br><br>[color:blue]Your unsolicited Apple authority</font color=blue>

Thanks, but I have a cable modem connection. I don't think having the ADSL would do any good. Thanks for the offer, though.<br><br>Still, what I need most is a quick and easy way to transfer files from my Powerbook to my G5. WiFi would certainly work, but its not so fast compared to gigabit ethernet or firewire. Firewire target mode works just great, but I hate having to restart my computer every time; OSX has spoiled me.<br><br>I sure wish I could get IP over firewire to work. Its such a fantastic idea. It would be super fast, require no restarting and I could even use it to share the internet connection of the G5 with my powerbook; I wouldn't even have to pay for the cost of a router. I'm going to try it again this week. Who knows, maybe Panther will have fixed it?<br><br>