Question on airport extreme and airport express

[Scarzy]

Hi,
I am getting a 13" MBP this weekend, and currently have a 802.11g wireless modem router (standard BT home hub). Also, my internet comes through the phoneline. The phone cable runs into a splitter with adsl and phone line sockets. Then the adsl is connected to the home hub.
There is a laptop and desktop (both windows) which only support 802.11g, i know it should work with them.

If in a couple of months i buy airport extreme will it work with my current set up, as in can i do a direct swap for the home hub and use the aiport extreme as my wireless modem router?

Does airport express work the same? Whats the difference?

Will i see a significant speed improvement going from 802.11g to 802.11n?

sorry im new to this stuff ,
any help is appreciated,
thanks

 

[MacMini2009]

The Airport Extreme is just like any router, it will work with almost every computer, but it is just Apple branded and has some nicer features than other routers. I currently have an Airport Extreme connected wirelessly to a 3 year old Dell laptop and it works perfectly fine.

 

[phairphan]

You will not be able to get rid of your modem/wireless router combo. Neither the Airport Extreme nor the Airport Express have a DSL modem. You'll need to turn off the router features in your current box and run an Ethernet cable to your new Extreme or Express.

You probably won't see much of a speed increase, if any, since none of your computers support the faster n speeds. With your current setup, you won't see won't benefit much from the Extreme over the Express. As you add computers that support n, the Extreme will have an advantage because it's dual band and will allow to you use both g and n clients without a performance hit to the n clients. Additionally, the Extreme will let you add a hard drive for wireless storage.

Hope this helps.

 

[Scarzy]

Ok thanks very much. Yeah I know I wouldn't see an improovement fr the computers using g. But the mbp supports n. So I will get one a couple of months down the line. Thanks guys.

 

[pol0001]

A nice feature of the Airport Extreme is that you can connect a USB-HD and use that for Time Machine. That was the my reason for switching from an Airport Express to the Extreme. (I already had an USB-HD, so it was cheaper than buying a Time Capsule.)

 

[Scarzy]

Yeah that's a nice feature I already have a 320 gb portable hard drive so it's nice to be able to connect it up.

 

[Scarzy]

Ok so I just run an Ethernet cable from home hub to the base station?

Also I connect my xbox 360 via ethernet can I do that from the base station or would it still need to be done from the home hub?

Even though my home hub supports 802.11g only that won't effect the 802.11n of the base station will it?

Poster above mentioned disabling router features of home hub. How do I do this (it's the original 1.0 home hub)

thanks