Best Airport Network Solution?

[dandubois89]

For almost the last year I have been using an Airport Extreme on 2.4b/g and and Airport express in my room to extend my wireless network. I also have a usb hdd configured to back up my macbook using time machine. Well I have a new roommate moving in and he has his own extreme and two expresses.

I have some questions on what would be the best way to consolidate our networking devices. I considered us selling our extremes and getting the new time capsule so both of our macs can use 5ghz while my girlfriends dell uses the 2.4.

Is there a noticeable speed difference between time capsule backup vs hard drive to extreme connected via usb?

I think i want the expresses to extend the network. Im just not sure what the best set up would be. Any advice? Tips? Comments? Thanks in advance. much appreciated.

 

[trip1ex]

good question. Wireless N would be much faster for backing up. Although I'm not sure how fast it is on the dual-networking setup (I've read that N on this is going to be either slower than it usually is or have less range when in dual-networking setup.) I don't think there is a difference between a Time Capsule and an Extreme as far as "back speeds" are concerned as long as the wireless speeds are equal.

HOw is the backup to the Extreme via Time Machine? I'm leery of doing that with my Extreme because it isn't officially supported.