Hands-on: Airport Extreme a bit too far ahead of curve?

Computerworld - More than three years ago, when Apple Computer Inc. first began shipping computers with wireless hardware it called Airport, the computer maker was decidedly ahead of the Wi-Fi curve.
Only in the past couple of years have computer users and companies taken to the idea of wireless computing, and Wi-Fi access points are quickly popping up in airports, coffee shops and hotels. In March, Intel took the wraps off its wireless initiative, Centrino, and it is backing it with a megabucks marketing campaign.
So it's not surprising that Apple is again trying to stay ahead of the wireless game with its newest iteration of wireless networking, which it unveiled in January and has dubbed Airport Extreme (see story).
But Apple, which tends to lead the way in the computer industry, may have gotten a bit ahead of itself on this rollout. The faster 802.11g standard it's using hasn't yet been formally ratified by the Wi-Fi Alliance, and the Airport Extreme access points it sells have come under fire by users complaining about dropped connections and sensitivity to interference.
For most of April, I used one of the new Airport Extreme base stations -- the distinctive Apple variety looks like a white plastic UFO -- that the company loaned to Computerworld for a hands-on test drive. It was generally set up for a mixed-use environment, meaning it could be accessed by computers with either the new or old 802.11 cards, although I did at times set it exclusively for 802.11g access. That way, I could test data transfer speeds between two 802.11g-equipped Powerbooks.
The base stations, which also offer USB ports so printers can be connected and accessed wirelessly from computers on the network, sell for $199. For $50 more, there's a version that also has a dial-up modem and an external antenna port. The cards for laptop computers or desktop Power Macs cost $99 each. More information is available from Apple's Web site (download PDF).
While my Airport Extreme did indeed deliver faster transfer speeds -- usually about double what I was used to -- it, too, was plagued by mysterious dropped connections and couldn't deliver a connection for more than a few days without needing to be restarted.
A quick scan of Apple's online discussion boards shows that I'm not alone in seeing this problem. Dozens of users have written in complaining of basically the same thing: The base station is working fine, then seems to "disappear" from the network. To reconnect, users have to unplug the station, let