A revised! AirPort Extreme 802.11n review from Macintouch

[Update: The Macintouch reviewer was measuring performance across a NAT interface. It turns out that NAT translation is slow in consumer devices, and it becomes a real bottleneck for connections. Most of us would never notice this, since we probably use a switch for wired devices and we do NAT translation only to connect to the Internet. In most circumstances Internet connections are so slow NAT translation is not an issue. The revised Macintouch review is favorable, as are most reviewers.]

Macintouch reviewed Apple's new 802.11n router: Review: AirPort Extreme 802.11n. It's pretty negative, though they tried to be kind. Slow, quirky, hot. Bleh.

I'll wait for version two.

One side-comment caught my eye:

As a side note, USB disks we attached never spun down when idle. This maximizes AirPort Disk's availability — a client will never have to wait for a disk to spin up — at the cost of increased power consumption.

The power consumption is trivial, but this also shortens the life of the drive. Another negative!

[Update: A Google study on hard drive longevity claims spin down has no effect on drive lifespan. Even so, I like spin down just to reduce noise.]