Update. Okay, so I pulled a Hawkmoon and ignored the APS IT advise.
Well, sorta. I went the Millcreek direction and got a mesh router. Netgear Orbi RBR50 and two satellites. Admittedly a splurge (damn you Costco!) over my original price ceiling. I ended up with what I think is a good purchase though, and mesh was probably the right way to go given available options. There's just nothing out there as a single router with the 800' range of my old Cradlepoint, so mesh is about the best equivalent.
I got the fixed wireless installed yesterday, and connecting the Orbi and satellites was pretty seamless other than the Orbi took a while to figure out the POI box for the microwave antenna. I put the main router in my office which is kinda on one end of the house, a satellite in the living room in the middle of the house where the TV will go and where I can plug my Roku and Blue ray into cat5, and the second satellite at the end of the upstairs bonus room that point directly at my shop.
With where everything is, I'm getting excellent coverage inside and about three acres of good coverage outside. Netgear makes outdoor Orbi satellites, so I might look at a couple of them in the future to see if I can extend my range. I've got 110 at both my irrigation pumps, so with a few outdoor satellites, I could potentially get around 20 acres of coverage.
I will say the only hassle with the Orbi system was that either Costco had a bunch of these in storage for a couple of years, or Netgear is WAY behind in sending out routers with current firmware. When I went to set up my guest network, it wasn't there. After spending like 30 minutes searching forums, I discovered that guest networks were added to the Orbi in updated firmware. Mine was 1.2.0.6. Current firmware is 2.3.0.32 - WTF Netgear!?!
That wouldn't have been bad, except there was no going from my firmware straight to the latest version. There were literally 30 firmware updates between me and the current version. By trial and error, I was able to skip from say, 1.2.0.6 to 1.8.0.20, but then I had to do that manually up the chain until 1.12.0.8, at which time it recognized automatic firmware updates. So I had something like 12 manual updates to do (4 updates * 3 devices) before the router and satellites would start updating themselves. And several of those manual updates messed up router/satellite connectivity and I had to go through several iterations of relinking sats and router. So that was a hassle.
Now that everything is up to date though, it's pretty smooth and seamless sailing. Outside, my phone just goes to the closest satellite without looking for some extender network, so no burps as I move from one coverage area to another. So overall, happy.
I'm also happy with my fixed wireless so far. The tech was good about putting my antenna in an inconspicuous (and safe from high winds) area of my roof that still has an unobstructed view of my assigned microwave relay. At the old place the antenna was right on the highest part of the roof, sticking out like a sore thumb. This one is pointed at a hill in Oregon, and I'm at a currently underused location. I signed up for 10mb for $80/mo (versus 5mb for $110/mo at the old place) and am currently getting 18-20mb during the day. At night it can drop to around 8-10, which the tech said to expect because of the netflix and whatnot, but that's still plenty good so that I can finally start watching hidef TV again without a bunch of buffering or auto resolution drops.
