Gene,
You are absolutely correct. I am glad that I live between Washington D.C. and Baltimore as this assures me some choice. Having said that, all of the folks around here who constantly complained about Comcast and never tried the equal, but marginally less costly, services of Millenium cable effectively destroyed what little competition there was in cable services by allowing Comcast to run Millenium out of business. A shame as the services provided really were on par with each other.

My neighborhood is one of the few in the area that has no FIOS yet, so I really have very limited choice also as I really need faster than residential DSL to be able to tele-commute when the kids are ill, etc… If Comcast tells me that I can’t have a LAN downstream from there WAN I will be in a real pickle too!

Many of my former customers at the Annapolis Apple Store live on the Chesapeake Bay’s Eastern Shore where your choices tend to be dial-up and satellite. I was on first name basis with many who would come by frequently to use our free WiFi, particularly when there were OSX updates available. I love the Shore (as we call it) but my current lifestyle is not possible there. I hope that the next 4-8 years shows some renewed emphasis on information infrastructure.

@ Adam: I agree with you about some of those third-party routers. I’ve tried a few, and they invariably fail in a year or two. So you do get what you pay for.

As to the ISP issue: Well, that assumes you have a choice, and some people don’t.

Peace,
Gene

I love Back to My Mac, it works great for me but network configurations being what they are I understand the frustrations when it doesn’t work. The Airport Extreme is one of the products made by Apple which garners a lot of “too expensive to compete” comments. To that I say, configure any other consumer router and then go to an Apple Store and ask for a demo of the Airport Utility. Again, it’s a case where Apple makes it so much easier to do that it may be worth a bit more money. The ease of use is just phenomenal!

Before I sound too much like an Apple ad I will freely admit that I have used many other brands of router/hub/802.11 boxes and I would have no problem doing so again. Although I also have yet to find another consumer model that has lasted more than two years of daily use. My experience is that, over time, the costs are actually about equal. Unfortunately I also have a hard time finding a retailer that will let me try out the “easy web-browser based” setup. My Airport WiFi network is hidden and has WPA2 password security. I set something like this up for a friend about 2 years ago using a new Linksys router. It took the 2 of us (he is very technically competent as well) 90 minutes of manual searching and setup tool tweaking just to find out how to create a private, hidden WiFi. I’ve set up 6 such Airport networks over the last 4 years. None of them took more than 10 minutes start to finish and they all work.

As for any ISP that requires me to use their router for my LAN? They won’t get my business! If there were no other alternatives I would still put my LAN behind an Airport so that I can have some control over security. In my neighborhood I am pretty much limited to Comcast or Verizon DSL (no FIOS). Comcast has much better network speed but I will drop it like a hot potato if they ever tell me that I need to let them administer my home network. That thought just scares me.

Cheers!