Upgrade to new airport extreme?

[Mac'nCheese]

I'm still using my old, round airport extreme and was advised by an apple rep to upgrade to the newer, square ones. He says its five times faster. But really, for $180, does that make much of a difference. Videos play fine, email loads fast enough, nintendo wii hooks up ok. Doesn't sound like I would get much of a boost from a newer one? Am I missing something or do you guys agree, and if it ain't broke.....

 

[reLAXER564]

I purchased an airport extreme recently with the same hesitation you are expressing now and let me just say... it's fast. I was using an older Draft N Belkin router and it's range just wasn't cutting it. The new extreme is much much faster, has better range and is much easier to manage / set up. I would highly recommend it. The dual band is what makes it worth it for me (2.4 & 5 GHz).

I know Linksys and other competitors will have routers with similar speeds but I found it to be well worth the money.

 

[ftaok]

Don't get the newest AEBS if you're not using Leopard/Snow Leopard or an Windows machine. You can't set it up with a Tiger or earlier Mac.

But, if you do have the required Mac/PC for set-up, I can tell you that the new AEBS is pretty slick. Better range and faster speeds (I currently only use 11g) than my old Netgear 11g. I have it my basement and I can easily connect on the 2nd floor without any issues.

It rarely drops the wifi signal, wheras the Netgear would require a reboot every week.