AirPort Extreme Base Station

I never understood how one could spend $200 on a wireless router when there so many inexpensive products from NetGear or Linksys. Until now that is...

After watching David Pogue's Router Diaries a few days ago and then spending another 20 minutes this morning trying to fix the connection on the PowerBook which apparently was too far away from the old router I went to Apple Store and purchased AirPort Extreme Base Station.

First impressions:

• Great signal strength — AirPort indicator shows maximum signal level in any spot in my house. Even in the basement.
• Configuration via AirPort Utility application is more convenient compared to HTTP-based setup on my old router.
• Utilities folder now has programs for both old and new AirPort Base Station which makes it confusing in the beginning. I deleted the old version.
• When you install new AirPort Extreme software from the CD included with the router it automatically unlocks the 802.11n features on your Mac (if you have one of the later Core 2 Duo models). Being an old-time Windows user, I expected to have another CD (or another utility, or two) I have to run and even contacted Apple support to ask where it is.
  
  NOTE: The easiest way to check the network card model is by running Network Utility. It shows Model: Wireless Network Adapter (802.11 a/b/g/n) when the network card was enabled to operate in 802.11n mode.

I like it. Is it worth $199 CDN? If it will save (20 * 52 * 2) minutes of my time in the next couple of years then definitely YES.