Airport Extreme for house with all Windows PCs?

[AndrewMRiv]

I do tech support for a friend and he wants to "copy" my network. The only issue is that his house has all Windows PCs but most of the house has iPhones.

My setup is an Airport Extreme that connects to my iMac and MacBook Pro 13" Retina (both Late 2013) so they get access to the AC speeds. Additionally, my gaming PC is connected wirelessly too. I do not use the Airport Utility on my PC simply because I do not need to.

Would it be practical for me to allow my friend to get the Airport Extreme for his house? I also told him that he would need to invest in AC Wifi cards to get the full speeds since all of his family's PCs have N wifi cards.

I am mainly wondering if the Airport Utility on Windows is less powerful than the Mac version.

Thank you.

 

[robgendreau]

IMHO Airport Utility stinks. After Apple deprecated v 5.6 it became far less useful.

Yeah, you can get by if need be. But it will be endlessly frustrating for your friend because Apple doesn't give access to router features most every other manufacturer does, and they often have rather obscure ways of doing things compared to how web-interfaced routers do things.

And you can't add antennas and they're expensive.

OTOH if you're the only person who's gonna ever touch it, then feel free. I still wouldn't use one, but if it's what you're used to and you've managed this far it might work for you.

 

[drsox]

I do tech support for a friend and he wants to "copy" my network. The only issue is that his house has all Windows PCs but most of the house has iPhones.

My setup is an Airport Extreme that connects to my iMac and MacBook Pro 13" Retina (both Late 2013) so they get access to the AC speeds. Additionally, my gaming PC is connected wirelessly too. I do not use the Airport Utility on my PC simply because I do not need to.

Would it be practical for me to allow my friend to get the Airport Extreme for his house? I also told him that he would need to invest in AC Wifi cards to get the full speeds since all of his family's PCs have N wifi cards.

I am mainly wondering if the Airport Utility on Windows is less powerful than the Mac version.

Thank you.

I think you should advise your friend to look at the recommendations on SmallNetBuilder : http://www.smallnetbuilder.com. AE units work well with other Apple stuff, but a mostly non Apple environment would be better off with a unit from Asus/Netgear/Linksys. AE routers are not the most versatile or the most powerful, but are the best for Apple environments (IMO)

 

[sjinsjca]

I disagree with those in this thread who say the Airport Extreme is for Apple houses only. That might be true for Time Capsule (why pay for Time Machine capability if your OS can't use it?). But Apple's router-only routers offer spectacular performance for all platforms, and they're reliable and easy to set up. True, the latest AirPort Utility setup application has been dumbed-down too much; I agree. On the other hand I set up a rather complex network the other day that included server provisioning and port forwarding, and there were no issues. So, that complaint depends on what you want to do, and the AirPort Utility 5.6 that some folks have retained might still be usable for the newest hardware (don't know).