Airport extreme ?

[Greysquirrel]

Apple is selling refurbished 3rd generation for $129.
My question is what is the difference between the 3RD and a 5TH unit and is the 5th worth the extra money?
This is for home use with only around 3-4 wireless units using it plus a couple of hard wired units.

 

[Brian33]

I'm still learning about this stuff, but I know that at some point Apple added "simultaneous dual-band" to the Airport Extreme. My guess is that the 3rd-gen units do not have this feature.

I think that the simultaneous dual-band feature means that you could have some devices using the 5 GHz band and some using the 2.4GHz band, at the same time. I think you might want to do this if you had some 802.11g devices and some "n" devices -- you could put them on different bands and the "g" devices wouldn't slow down the "n" devices' throughput.

For my house, this feature makes little difference my old Time Capsule is set up for 2.4GHz mixed g/n mode.

Regards,
Brian33.

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OWC is selling used Airport Extremes for $66:

"Apple genuine units have been OWC tested and updated to the latest firmware"

see: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Apple/A1143G/

I don't know what generation they are but the model number is A1143.

Regards,
Brian33.

 

[aziatiklover]

This is where I learn all about the all Apple Aiport and what I have learned is having final N is better than draft. For normal user I don't think it matters much tho.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPort

 

[CWallace]

The 5th generation model has revised antennas and more powerful signal levels so lab tests show better performance and range. I went from a 4th gen to 5th gen and noticed a decent improvement in both range and throughput.

 

[Greysquirrel]

Thanks for all the replies, I really appreciate all the input to my question.

 

[ftaok]

[/COLOR]OWC is selling used Airport Extremes for $66: see: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Apple/A1143G/

I don't know what generation they are but the model number is A1143.

Regards,
Brian33.

Based on the system requirements for setting it up, it's a 3rd gen AEBS.

3rd gen units could be set-up with 10.4 or higher.
4th and 5th gen units require 10.5 or higher.

 

[gbullman]

Airport extreme ?

FYI, I just bought one of the refurbished units from OWC and it shows up as a 2nd Generation AirPort Extreme in the Airport Utility. I believe the only difference from the 1st Generation is the ports are 10/100/1000 but have not been able to confirm that for sure.

So far unit is working great, big improvement over cycling power on my Linksys 8 to 10 times a week.