It looks like you’ve gotten a lot of input on brands (I’m using Belkin at home) but I do have one additional bit of advice: if you are using cordless phones, you may find that 2.8GHz wi-fi interferes with them. I ended up getting new 5.8GHz cordless phones and that solved my phone reception problem.

I don’t know what you have (or actually, truth be told, what we have), but my sons’ iBooks work, my MacBook works, and my husband’s G3 work. But whatever I used to have, that was before the G3 didn’t. It could only get wireless in one room downstairs and two rooms upstairs. My hubby says that used to you could get external pickups to help with that. I don’t know if you still can. (If you can, why did I get a MacBook?)

He also says that the best thing you can do is go to your new house, after the electric is in but before they drywall, and run wire to every room. It’s not hard to do; you don’t have to put the ends on till later if you don’t want to; and all the other stuff shows you where the wires are going anyway. That’s what hubby’s best friend did (also a Mac enthusiast) and he’s been very happy. The cables are faster than airport.

Make good choices!

Since you will be building your house, have you thought about adding a few network drops in a few rooms? Even with a wireless network, regular old drops can be very useful from time to time.

Also, one more side note: Jami and I switched from Cable to DSL and love it. It’s half the price and both upstream and downstream speeds are considerably faster (1.5 to 2 times!). I understand that cable speeds can vary from location to location, so “results may vary,” but if you’re tired of Comcast eating away at your bank account, you may wanna check it out!

A much, much, much cheaper router (Linksys, as low as $50 or so) would let all three of my Macs share the internet (iMac wired; laptops wireless), but I’m not clear on what the printing logistics would be. If I could have my iMac act as a print server and handle printing on behalf of the laptops, I’d be willing to go with the cheap router. But if I’d need to add on a $80 wireless print server, we’re getting closer to the $180 price of AirPort Extreme — and I would be certain that AirPort Extreme would play nicely with the Macs with a minimum of fuss.

AirPort Extreme has 32mW of power; at macwireless.com they sell wireless routers with up to 200mW.

If printing is not an issue for you, then you have more options.

Yes, I have been shopping for way too many gadgets and gizmos lately. Let me know what you get and whether you’re happy with it.