Half of the day today the site has been down. The reason being our Airport Extreme Base Station has a short in the cable. I think a power surge over night happened to trigger it to turn off. I bought the base station used on ebay about a year ago and unfortunately it came with the cable with the short. Since then Apple came out with a new model that supports 802.11n and I have been wanting one for sometime. However, Apple’s wireless products are always more expensive than the competition. I managed to score one on ebay last weekend for $99 it was an open box one but it appears to be working great. They retail for $179. The new Airport allows you to use a USB hard drive over the wireless to use with Time Machine. It also comes with a built in switch with 3 gigabit ethernet ports. My plan is to sell the old one for around $30 and then I also have a separate 5 port gigabit switch I was using that I hope to get $20 for. If anyone knows someone that might be interested in them let me know. To replace the power adapter on the old airport it would cost about $10. The old one also has a USB port that you can use to make your printer wireless. So far I am liking the new one. My connection speed now with my laptop is 130 Mbit/s so just has fast as a 100 Mbit wired connection. I am going to have to try some file copying tests to see how well it performs. Here is a pic of what the new base station looks like. Pretty much like a Mac Mini but a little thinner.
