I purchased an Airport Express from Apple last week just so that I can bring it with me on my trips (I lost my previous one when I forgot to pack it after my stay at the Westin Mission Hills :( ). It took me less than 5 minutes from opening the box to getting online wirelessly. The setup was extremely quick and simple!!!

Now, if only Apple will come out with the next generation Express with both an audio out (which it has now) and a video out!!!

It seems like a Bluetooth enabled PDA might be able to fax with this item. Does anyone know if there is any fax software for Windows Mobile that would work with this?

In a hotel a fax modem can be an acceptable printer substitute for a couple of pages faxed to yourself at the front desk.

I was just wondering about that! (the video out). If you can slim cheapo PCI cards that do video out you'd think it'd be easy to put it into an airport express. Then you just need to write something that allows you to export the display which should be easy given that Macs are unix under the hood - hence such easy support for VNC/remote desktop.

BTW - I'm an apple express toting traveller too.

I think a major issue has been synching the the audio and video.
I'm not an expert, but i understand that is the same reason I cannot stream the same song to two airports. I currently have 4 at home for audio steaming and have to play something different in each zone for parties... but I digress.

What about hotels that require the laptop to authenticate, even if its click OK to accept terms (or bill to the room)? I assumed it was looking at the MAC and maybe a cookie but wasn't sure. If its just the MAC then the router would work fine.

Anyone ever enounter problems when sharing hotel internet?

If you were sending the video and audio seperately then yes. Hence I find I can't use my airport to get the sound to my speakers when watching a movie as it's all out of sync.

But presumably if the audio and video is sent over as a single signal and split to audio out and video out at the airport end then it should be fine.


I wonder if it's possible to export an app (it's main window + sound) rather than the whole desktop display. Certainly you can export individual windows in x-windows but no idea what the mac windowing system is like. Oh - btw: there is a 3rd party app which will do the audio part allowing you to export audio from any app to your airport not just from itunes.

*Can't* see this ever being a problem. Not least cos from the outside you can't really tell the difference between a laptop plugged directly into the net connection and a slew of laptops connected to an airport which is then plugged into the net connection. (it's what the airport does - talk to the connection as a single device on behalf of everything behind it, and track who is talking to whom so it can pass things backwards correctly).

By the time you are talking about webpages to accept terms your networking is up and running, it's just that they are blocking a bunch of traffic from you to the outside world a few steps down (at their firewall) untill you complete the webpage (which you can access). Well blocking and hijacking all your web traffic.


btw: I assume you mean your MAC laptop and are not asking about MAC addresses (a technical term).

Thats exactly the problem. Coca apps are not like X apps, you cannot export the display like X.

I played around with that 3rd party app... cannot remember the name, and VLC player (which allows you to decouple audio and video) and could never get it to sync up quite right. I'm sure an apple solution would work fine I had just understood that sync issue to be the inital problem early on.

Actually I was talking about MAC address.

If each latop has to accept the TOS (billing concerns aside) then, for me, it would defeat the purpose. I'd like to be able to use a wireless router while traveling for WiFi phones (with no user interface to accept TOS, etc). So if the connection was authenticted once via a laptop and then all traffic passed correctly, it wouldn't be a problem. However, if each device was treated like a unique device the it wouldn't work.

My understanding is that some hotel systems use cookies which would be stored on the laptop. Just wondering if anyone had run into that or if they authenticted the connection by the port or MAC address.

There's only one MAC address they'll see - that of your airport express. So once one laptop has talked through the airport express to click the button then another other deviced behind the airport express should work - it'll all look the same from the other end.

I guess it is possible that they could distinguish between web page accesses from one computer and another by requiring you to accept a horrid all sites cookie which they monitor. Yuck. Horrid. Nasty hack - but I've seen sillier ideas. But even then, you wouldn't be using web access from your wifi phone or what have you.

I've never tried this in a hotel but I'd put reasonable money on it ;). i.e. I'd personally buy the phone on the belief it would be 99% likely to work.

Of course getting confirmation from someone who has been in a hotel of this type and used said method is ideal.

If you want to test a particular hotel without buying anything you might set all your cookie acceptance to manual and see what's being requested / review your cookies folder.

Anyone? There must be someone with experience.

It works. One airport express connected to the hotel internet connection, multiple laptops connected to the airport express. One charge.

I believe most 802.11x Wi-Fi will support 32 computers at the same time. I once had 14 connected to mine.

MisterNice

It works just like any other broadband/router combination.

Netgear Travel Router on sale FAR or 9.99
 

Netgear travel router WGR101 is 9.99 after instant savings and Mail In rebate at CompUSA. I think it is actually FREE after rebate at Outpost.com. I picked one up at CUSA, as I got a $125.00 computer.

-fduvall