The Express isn't the only AirPort in town. Is that last room in your huge house suffering from a weak wireless signal? Plop an AirPort within range of your base station and it amplifies that signal and makes it much speedier. In a hotel room and chained to the uncomfortable desk thanks to a 2-foot-long Ethernet cable? Hook up the AirPort and now your room has swanky, secure wireless, so you can soak in the tub and surf. If you happen to have a handheld Apple device, such as an iPhone or iPod Touch, so much the better you can remotely control iTunes and play music on demand without ever leaving your cushy couch. Plug its 3.5mm audio mini jack into any speakers around the house and then you can stream music - in digital or analog - wirelessly to those speakers from the iTunes library on your desktop or laptop computer. Its iTunes capabilities are another key AirPort selling point.
And if you're on a Mac, built-in Bonjour capabilities mean users on the network can easily find one another to share pictures, videos or any other kind of data. Plug it into a printer via the USB cable, and presto, any of those 10 users is able to print documents wirelessly.
Security-wise, you can set the Express to use WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) or WPA2, 40-bit or 128-bit Wireless Security (WEP) and MAC address filtering.Ĭonnect AirPort to your DSL (direct subscriber line) or cable modem, or your Ethernet network, and it provides wireless Internet access for up to 10 users. It's also compatible with both Mac and Windows operating systems.
Its small form factor means the Express slips neatly into the side pocket of even a svelte laptop carrying case. That's a lot of features for a device that's only 3.7 inches (9.4 centimeters) high by 2.9 inches (7.5 centimeters) wide and 1.1 inches (2.8 centimeters) thick.