Design over function springs to mind with some products. When Apple launched their iMac (the original colourful bubbles) they reshaped (excuse the pun), the future of technology. Their Airport Extreme Base Station followed this design mould, with curvy lines, basically resembling what one would expect a ship from outer space to look like.

What the base station offers is a wireless access point, so that you can connect your Apple Macintosh to other devices and/or the internet. You connect the base station to the internet (via the internal modem) and in turn, any Mac devices that you have with Aiport (wireless) cards installed can then access the World Wide Web.

You could also put together a wired network, as the base station supports 10BaseT and 100BaseT ethernet connections. These certainly supply a more reliable connection.

In use the Airport Extreme Base Station is a dream to use. Ultimately configurable with Apple's own software and very well made. However, it has now been replaced by a more up-to-date model, offer gigabit ethernet and wireless-n capability. Gone is the internal modem on the new unit, instead connecting to your Broadband connection for mega-fast surfing.