I run three Apple Airport Extremes (AE) in my house, one downstairs and 2 upstairs on either end of the house. I'm pretty pleased. The two upstairs are plugged into the downstairs AE and all three use the same SSID/password. I've created a very large footprint around my house/garage/pool. The tenants in the apartment over my barn, more than 200ft from the house, easily receive the signal, but I set them up on an Apple Express using a different SSID/password to give them better coverage in and around the barn on a separate DSL line.

I can move around the house and I automatically switch to whichever AE is strongest. I have a XBOX360, Wii, BluRay player and Smart TV on the wifi downstairs, and the DirecTV is hardwired to the downstairs AE. Upstairs I have another Smart TV and an Apple TV on an AE via wifi, and the other AE has a BluRay Player via wifi and Roku and network HDs via hardwire. We have 2 iPads and 2 iPhones logged in moving around the house using the wifi of all three AEs. I have seen no issues with this set up.

I used the Cisco/Linksys in the past with good results, but I went with the Apple stuff to be able to more easily stream music, use Airplay, etc.

Managing the AEs is very easy using AirPort Utility on either my laptop or iPad.