Alienware Chooses Airgo chipsets for new laptops
Julios Lanza writes "Alienware has chosen chipsets made by Airgo Networks to power two game-focused laptops. Alienware's 17-inch Aurora m9700 and 19-inch Aurora mALX notebooks are equipped with the Airgo's Gen3 True MIMO (multiple input, multiple output). Airgo's chips are designed to connect a computer with Wi-Fi systems at speeds fast enough to make high-performance gaming possible, Airgo executives said."
Airgo's "True MIMO" is a pre-standard interpretation of the future 802.11blah (TGnSync vs. WWiSE) and will most likely not be compatible with the final 802.11n.
The MIMO concept itself offers to double the throughput at the expense of increasing bandwidth from 20 to 40MHz as well as spreading multipath garbage on the spectrum. If you've had fun with congestion on 802.11b/g channels, this 802.11n will really make your day.
Ok, so it might have marginally better spectral efficiency per Mbps but really, what we want to see is true beamforming dynamic-arrays that will properly 'point' the RF where it's supposed to go in real-time.
Meanwhile one of these 'gaming' laptops will just screwup the spectrum and slowdown existing b/g channels.
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