Difference between Airport base station / express

I'm in the market for a wireless router and I must admit the apple ones look as sleek as ever. However I was wondering what exactly the difference was between the airport base station and the airport express (the wall adapter style). Besides almost $100..

 

Extreme has:
1) air-disk now with timemachine support.
2) extra 3 gigabite ethernet ports

But express does
1) wireless music streaming.

So they are kinda aimed at different things.
the express is good for extending your wireless network/adding music streaming/wireless printing. Or if you only need a very basic wireless network... ie one computer.

But if your looking for a larger more robust network (esp wired) then the extreme is the way to go, with the added benefit of wireless time-machine, if you have multiple mac's this could be a really easy/cheap way to stream-line your backup's.

so it really what you want to do. I have a express, and it works well... I'm streaming music right now and the wireless printing is great... but I have another router to do the heavier network work!
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The look is the least important criteria in selecting a router. Both the express and the base station can act as routers. Typically the base stations have some gigabit ethernet ports so you can also share your internet connection wired. This is the big difference. The express only has one ethernet port so the only way to share your internet connection is wireless. The base station has a "wan" port that connects to your cable or dsl modem and it has several ethernet ports for you to connect wired devices.

I just picked up a time capsule. It has 802.11n, one wan port and 3 wired ethernet ports. Lastly, it has 500 Gig of internal storage for backing up our macs. I haven't installed it yet but I plan to "get around to it".

Apple routers tend to be simplistic. There is no blocking sites by url or keyword but Apple routers are easy to administer. If you don't have any wired devices (network drives, old pc's, printers, etc) then go for the express. If you have at least one wired device, go for the base station. If you want backup via time machine, go for the time capsule. If you want more sophisticated capabilities such as internet content filtering in your router, there is no Apple option for you.

 

Airport Express does not have a built in modem, so you cannot connect to it your DSL line directly.

 

^^^ none of the apple "air" products have a modem, and all require a connection to a modem for a dsl internet connection.
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I just use both.

 

OMG The old Apple Airport Extreme Base Stations had built in dial up modems, so why on earth did they scrap it?

 

For price reduction and the market isn't crying for that feature with broadband ethernet and wireless hot spots being as frequent as they are now.

 

I hve no idea, and its kind of a pain, as most asdl modems these days are also wireless routers, so getting the airport and modem to play nice together isn't much fun
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