Future Mac owner seeking advice

Hi! So I've been using a PC my whole life. Odds are with the new laptops I'm making the switch to try out the Apple brand.
I've looked at the "Designing Airport Networks" pdf and just wanted to confirm I read it right and my idea for a home network would work. Also to gauge how difficult it may be to a OSX newbie such as myself, but not a Computer Tech newbie.
So here's my potential new network because I want to use a faster wireless system then 802.11g.
Apple Time Capsule - Cable modem into WAN port. Desktop PC into port 1. Time Capsule acts as DHCP host over a 802.11n 5GHz network. Laptop access's TC via wireless network and hopefully the PC can share files with the laptop through TC as well, I have to look into that and see how I can use the time capsule or if it is only for Time Machine backups in OSX.
Airport Extreme - PS3, DirecTV DVR and new printer/scanner/copier (most likely Canon or HP, still deciding) into the 3 gigabit ports. Airport Extreme acts as a bridge or access point and connects to the Time Capsule over wireless. Then those 3 devices have internet access thanks to the time capsule and its all over the 802.11n 5GHz network.
Sound doable? How difficult is it to set this up for a OSX newbie?
Any info would be much appreciated as I'm a bit nervous of making the change, but I REALLY don't want to buy a laptop with Vista or the next Windows that is supposedly built from Vista.

The_Drew wrote:
Hi
I've been trying to setup a similar network.
WRT TC to cable modem, that will work fine, you'll want to tweak the DHCP settings between the 2, you only want 1 device to act as your DHCP server so you avoid double NAT.
That depends on the cable modem. Some ISPs distribute cable modems, and DSL modems, that are routers in their own right. If that is the case then you'll want to set up your AirPort base station in bridged mode. That way the ISP's modem is the only one doing NAT and acting as the DHCP server.
Wirelessly connecting the Airport Extreme to your TC I'm not so sure about, in theory it should work but I'm trying to setup a similar situation at my house ( to avoid dark spots in the wifi coverage) and I can't get it to "join" an existing wireless network: It only wants to create a second wifi net.
In theory, its just a wireless bridge, but I'm guessing Apple has assumed we would use express base stations to perform that function and maybe the AEBS firmware won't allow it to join existing networks. Thats just my speculation though, so don't flame me if im wrong.
No, Apple does not assume that at all, both the Extreme and Express Base Stations and the Time Capsule are designed to be used together in what Apple calls a Wireless Distribution System (WDS). You can read instructions on how to do that beginning on page 42 of the manual 'Designing AirPort Networks'
http://manuals.info.apple.com/enUS/Designing_AirPort_Networks10.5-Windows.pdf
I had trouble getting it to work the first time I did it but it does work.
As for all the other comments about stability and poor support. Poppycock as we say in England. I have a G4 mac mini (g based), 1 Macbook (n based) 1 macbook pro (n based), 2 iphones (both g based) and 1 dell laptop (g based). The Apple devices are considerably more stable and drop connections far less frequently than my windoze machine. More importantly, they re-join networks much more quickly when they've dropped a connection than the Dell does too. But you should do your own testing to make sure its right for you.

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    Message was edited by: scooper

    scooper wrote:
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