Extra Antenna on Airport Extreme

My present Snow Airport does not give me full coverage in my house - I have to be relatively near it to get good signal (i.e. - 1 or 2 rooms away and not upstairs).
My question is this - if I buy an Airport Extreme with an extra Antenna (e.g. Dr. Bott Omni antenna), does plugging in the antenna into the airport turn the airports internal antenna off? Given the short lead on the Antenna, I'm thinking that I could site the Extreme BS downstairs and run the Antenna through the ceiling to upstairs. This would use the BS's antenna for downstairs and the external Antenna for upstairs - would this work?
Would I be better off buying an Airport Extreme BS and an Airport Express instead? I've heard third party routers are cheaper - can they act as remote stations just as easily? By the way, I only have standard airport card in my G3 iBook. My G3 iMac is cabled to the the Airport.
Many thanks for all your help.

Shane,
It might help to relocate your base station a short distance to avoid metal being in between (pipes, ductwork). I especially had a problem with a bathroom with a cast iron tub, medicine cabinet, etc. being between two rooms.
You might also want to verify that you have the latest firmware actually uploaded into the base station, as well as the software. A couple of times I noticed that I downloaded such things but never followed through to completion and the installers were sitting unused in my Utilities folder.

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