Here's what to look for when shopping, along with the best computer-friendly speakers we've tested.(A tip on extending the life of your AirPort base station: If you purchase an AppleCare warranty for a Mac and have bought an AirPort base station of any vintage within the two years prior to the Mac’s purchase date, Apple extends the warranty to the AirPort gear through the duration of the AppleCare warranty. Western Digital, OWC, Akitio and LaCie in particular are delivering a great selection of pro and consumer ThunderBolt drive solutions to date.A good set of speakers can help turn your PC into the ultimate home entertainment rig. For the average consumer, cheaper Thunderbolt Mac backup drives with 1st generation 10Gbps ThunderBolt ports and single HDD hard drive or SSD module are reasonably affordable for the Mac masses.Read reviews, compare specs and find the right router.Your router choices can come down to whether you want to sweep everything out of the house and start fresh, or you’re looking to replace or extend an existing network. Fast & secure dual band wireless gigabit routers from Asus, D-Link, Netgear, Amped & Trendnet. Take on the most demanding AAA game titles with NVIDIA® graphics and a 10th generation. Stunning desktop-grade power in a sleek, portable design keeps you playing your best wherever gaming takes you. HP SPEAKER 350 BLUETTOTH BLACK.Linksys Velop offers better throughput through its radio design. (See below why WDS or similar wireless systems aren’t reliable and reduce performance.) They’re really a combination of an access point (Wi-Fi management), a router (moving packets around a network and to and from the internet), and an ethernet switch to handle devices that only have wired connections or that work best with a gigabit ethernet connection.If you’re using or planning to use two or more of this kind of “old-style” gateway, they should be connected via ethernet.
Best Router And Pc And Speakers Mac And HaveAirPlay audio passthrough (AirPort Express only) However, for Mac users in particular, the gateways had Apple-specific features you couldn’t get elsewhere. What about Apple’s proprietary base station features?From Apple’s introduction of the original AirPort until just a few years ago, its base stations were often the best on the market, even if sometimes the most expensive’. TP-Link Deco M5 is our budget pick, with less throughput but only costing $230 for three nodes.Competition has dropped the prices of some of the leading mesh systems, and it’s likely the price will drop somewhat further, but with our top pick at as little as $100 per node and our budget at about $80 per node, it’s not likely to drop as much as prices have already in the last couple of years. The units include two gigabit ethernet jacks under their bases, one of which has to be connected to a broadband modem on one of the nodes. DHCP assignment or “reservation,” offering a permanent local network address to a device on the network Time Machine support built into Time CapsuleOther features found in Apple’s base stations are easy to find in other routers: Automated notification of firmware updates A network punch-through protocol called NAT-PMP for enabling remote access for applications, like games and servers Internet access to base station configuration and NAS drives via Back to My Mac Base station to base station networking (via Wireless Distribution System or WDS) (I wrote an article about extracting the audio from the newest Apple TV, and reviewed a high-end HDMI audio splitter/passthrough device, which is still available at Amazon and some other retailers.) Some receivers and other devices include AirPlay, and you can use Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil to create AirPlay and similar destinations. Apple TV models used to include a similar port, which was removed in the fourth-generation model. Use a Mini TOSlink cable, and it carries digital information over an optical link to an S/PDIF port in a receiver. Plug in a regular analog cable, and you get analog out. This remained a unique feature of the AirPort Express, which features an S/PDIF-compatible (Sony/Philips Digital Interface Format) analog/digital combination 3.5mm port. Guest networking (access to an isolated and protected network for guests)Each of Apple’s advantages has slipped away over the years:AirPlay audio passthrough. ![]() If you still need a router-attached hard drive, most AirPort competitors offer USB-shared drives via SMB.Base station to base station networking. I used to tout this feature as a great way to work around obstructions like walls and ceilings, and while the WDS that Apple used to make it work was an industry standard, only Apple seemed to have mastered it. And streaming and on-demand services have replaced some of the purpose for fileservers that mostly held video. Cloud-based storage and sync services reduce the need for network servers. Standalone NAS drives have significantly better features and performance, and are available at all sorts of prices, not just for caviar budgets. It’s rare you’d need to change your base station’s configuration outside of its LAN, and remote-drive access can be accomplished in a lot of other ways, including with many standalone NAS devices. However, it’s not reliable and not robust, where other remote access tools (like TeamViewer) work with aplomb. Back to My Mac (BtMM) was once a great feature, especially for people with Macs in multiple locations. I stopped recommending wireless base station interconnection about four or five years ago, and suggest gigabit ethernet (which can require running cable), powerline networking (which works through unmodified electrical outlets), or a mesh network (explained later) that uses a separate radio for connecting base stations.Remote configuration and drive access. Download paint pro for mac for freeHowever, it was barely picked up by any other party. While Apple developed it (in 2005), it wasn’t proprietary: it was submitted as a standard. NAT-PMP stands for Network Address Translation Port Mapping Protocol. From some users’ accounts, the problem remains.Network punchthrough. ![]() ![]() Or you might already be using a cloud-based backup service.If you still rely on some of the above features, notably printer and drive sharing, you don’t have to give them up, though you might have to reconfigure a device or sort out the best way to make changes. For instance, when I started having trouble with an older HP printer connected via USB to an AirPort Extreme, I went through a settings wizard on the printer that had failed to work for me before, and finally got it to join the Wi-Fi network directly. While I don’t recommend Time Machine by itself, either, using a drive attached to a Mac for networked backups gives you much better alternatives. If the Time Capsule dies, you have to crack open a case not intended to be open, extract the drive, and put it in another enclosure.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorMichele ArchivesCategories |