Problems using wired airport express to extend airport extreme wifi

I've followed the instructions in this community to use a wired airport express to extend an airport extreme wifi network.  Here is the issue I'm having.
The airport express wifi network has the same name as the airport extreme wifi network.  So far so good.  My laptop will pick up the airport express wifi in my office, and the airport extreme wifi in the other part of the house without any problems.
However, where the signals for the two overlap, my laptop will often latch on to the weaker wifi signal (I can tell by the number of bars) and my connection speed slows down significantly.  Since both airports have the same wifi name, I can't manually switch it to the better signal.
Has anyone encountered this and have suggestions?  My only solution was to give the two separate wifi names so i can switch manually, but this is an inelegant solution.

Hey dude, i'm having the same problem and i didn't find a proper solution for it, appart of creating another network as you said.
Its weired  cuz in my case only the small things doesn't connect to the new router(using 2 airport extreme's) such as the iphones ipods and apple tv, but my mac did it great change the signal all the time i went from the basement to my room. So i just create another network and for me it wasn't a big deal to change it all the time i go to the basement, even more when use a mac.
I know thats not the point when you have two wifi routers, but you know it's tolerable.
Greetings!

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