I bought the coolest new toy last week, one so good that I had to create a new post about it. Anyone that knows me is well aware that I simply cannot handle commercials on the radio. In my area the ratio of commercials and BS chatter to actual music playing is close to 50/50. I couldn't take it anymore. I looked at satellite radio, but I am trying to avoid further monthly costs. I looked at IPOD sound docks such as the Apple iHome and Bose Sounddock, but those are several hundred dollars and only allow me to play the same old music I listen to at the gym on my IPOD. I have recently learned to appreciate iTunes, it allows me to play my entire music collection, my audio CDs via my laptop's CD/DVD drive and I recently discovered the commercial-free iTunes radio stations. If you've never checked it out, there are hundreds of radiostations pre-programmed and some of them are excellent. Now if I could only pipe ALL of these sources to my home stereo...

Hello Apple Airport Express. This thing is awesome. Retail price is $99. Plug it into your household outlet next to your home stereo and connect a standard "audio headphone to RCA adapter" into the inputs on your home stereo and you now have wireless music to your home stereo. All of it--CDs, ripped and purchased music and the wonderful commercial free radiostations in iTunes. Then there's the icing on the apple cake...the USB port allows wireless printing to any USB printer. Awesome, thank you Apple.

Of course there is one caviat, you need to have wireless internet at home to fully take advantage of it. I use a Windows Vista-based Dell laptop with an AT&T/Yahoo DSL 2-wire brand router and it all works perfectly. Sort-of...switch your wireless internet security from the inferior WEP to WPA in your router settings and it should all work just great.

Dlink, Linksys and others make wireless music bridges, however they won't play DRM (digital rights management) encoded music that is purchased through iTunes. The Airport Express has played everything I have thrown at it.

I can play music on just my laptop, just my home stereo, or both simultaneously, allowing my house to be filled with music. I plan to buy a second Airport Express for the garage since my stereo out there will not get reception, then I don't miss a song going from the garage to the house for a beer. How cool is that?
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