Is it worth upgrading to 802.11n Airport Express (in terms of dropouts etc)

[jetee]

My computer and my airport express are a few rooms apart and as such playing music over Airtunes is inconsistent; sometimes it's perfect, other times I get tons of dropouts, which is quite annoying. (Also, sometimes I lose the signal altogether for some reason and it takes a couple of minutes to find my network again).

My question is this: Is it worth getting the newer version of Airport Express? Will I get a noticeable increase in reliability / signal strength?

And if so, is there anything useful I can do with my old one?

Thanks very much in advance for your help!

 

[will63nMD]

What computer/OS do you use?
What's your iTunes version?

Reason for my question is that I have a bunch of different computers in my place running from leopard to xp to vista 32 and vista 64.

Regardless of where my macbook is, it streams perfectly to the airport express - even when I'm on the 3rd floor and the express is in the basement. However, the pc's are a different story: vista 32 works ok, vista 64 and xp show the dropouts you describe.

I believe that the irregular streams may have less to do with your older express but possibly with your source (computer and configuration)?

 

[jetee]

Hey, thanks for answering.

I'm running iTunes 7.7 on a MacBook Pro (2.33Ghz) running Leopard with 2GB of RAM.

 

[will63nMD]

should work fine - back to the express, if a firmware update doesn't apply or work, your wireless config is good, you may fly with a replacement.

My express is new - and it works well with my macbook.

 

[jetee]

So you have a 802.11n Express?

 

[rishi13]

Absolutely. I posed the same questions when I was about to purchase my new Airport Express N. I rarely ever have drop outs, internet pages hardly ever hang now as well. It was a great purchase.

 

[CWallace]

I have seen better performance at longer distances with my AE 802.11n vs. my AE 802.11g.