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ASUS Guarantees Draft-N Upgradability

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the talking-only-to-yourself dept.

Glenn Fleishman writes, "One of the most irritating things about draft-n wireless gear being released this year is that there have been no guarantees from any chipmaker or manufacturer that today's devices — loosely based on the IEEE 802.11n Draft 1.0 — will be upgradeable through firmware to the final standard. Several computer makers now bake draft-n adapters into their laptops as an option, which is even more troublesome. Today ASUS, which uses the Broadcom chipset, said that they will swap out hardware if necessary for any draft-n gateways and adapters they ship until the end of 2006. If firmware upgrades aren't enough, they'll replace your hardware, with you paying just the shipping. Of course, they're guaranteeing compatibility with the March 2008 expected ratified version of 802.11n, but it still means that you won't be left with equipment that only works well with itself."

13 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Just shipping eh? by loraksus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If firmware upgrades aren't enough, they'll replace your hardware, with you paying just the shipping.

    The question is where to? This really has no value if they have you ship your card / router / motherboard to China via insured courier...

    --
    1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcfv gbhnjmk,l.;/
    1. Re:Just shipping eh? by tlhIngan · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Unless they want to limit the number of free devices they want to give out... I recall a problem a few years back where a chinese company wanted me to send the motherboard to them overseas (ecs?) to rma it.
      Needless to say, the board was worth less than the shipping cost.


      It's probably going to be like some rebates. You send your hardware in to get it swapped out to their US site. Their US site rejects your RMA because you forgot to either include the UPC code off the box, the receipt, or the hardware well packaged in closed cell foam. Oh yeah, then they'll reject it and make you send it to their main warehouse in Taiwan, via FedEx. Where it will stay on the shipping dock for six weeks, where the company will not have a record of it arriving, until someone empties the RMA bin.
  2. So What? by Karma+Farmer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So if you buy an expensive card today, and there's a small chance they'll give you an inexpensive free replacement in two or three years.

    Whoop-dee-freaking-doo.

  3. Re:who cares? by sleeper0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    as someone who regularly uses NAS storage for streaming video over 802.11g I can confirm in the real world that only some HD content will run real time well enough to watch. Higher bitrate content approaching 20Mbps while still underneath the real world transfer rates of that kit becomes unreliable, even when there is no other b/g traffic being broadcast in the area. Transfer rates don't stay as a solid line, and video streaming needs some headroom for buffering and catch up if anything glitches or something else gets broadcast. The same content is rock solid on 100Mb ethernet or the matched pre-N stuff I used. Not at all unlike mounting single layer DVDs that are less than 5Mbps and not being able to stream them well over 11b. I haven't rushed out to buy any pre-N though, but I'll be happy to use it when it's more reasonable.

    Saying "no one can use it" about network bandwidth right night is kind of like saying no one can use it about RAM in the 80's - you're assured of being wrong much quicker than you think. Hell, some people's consumer internet runs faster than 11g can now.

  4. Wireless mania continues. by Agent+Green · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I've been using wireless for several years (who here on /. hasn't??) and this seems to be a solution looking for a problem.

    802.11n is (yet another) way of shoving 10 pounds of shit through a far smaller pipe than is really available. 802.11a/b/g really serves me well in all the things that I do ... even though the most of what I do involves streaming FLACs around the house. It seems to me as if all this speed stuff only chews up the entire ISM band and is more about channel aggregation than about something truly innovative. I can't imagine the range or total throughput can be good when myself and all my neighbors keep crowding the entire spectrum.

    Really folks, how expensive is it to hardwire all the goodies that absolutely need the speed?? I'm probably missing the point.

    --
    // Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
    // IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
    1. Re:Wireless mania continues. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Imagine a large, digital flat panel TV display on your wall with only a power cord connecting it :-). Imagine you want to move it somewhere else, but it was connected with Ethernet... :-(

    2. Re:Wireless mania continues. by ergo98 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Really folks, how expensive is it to hardwire all the goodies that absolutely need the speed?? I'm probably missing the point.

      Is there some sort of who-needs-it-harumph! template that all you hardware naysayers use? I hope so, because it pains me to think that people actually bother typing these "Who needs it!" replies to every hardware progression.

      You don't need it? Great, then move along. Though I'm sure in a couple of years when it is the new universal standard, you'll happily appreciate the innovation.
    3. Re:Wireless mania continues. by msauve · · Score: 2, Insightful

      the point that the world is migrating to a wireless platform
      Uh, no.

      That would be saying that people want to move from switches back to hubs. Wireless provides convenience, but the tradeoff is that it is, and will always be, a shared medium. The more devices you have, the slower they go. And that includes the neighbor's devices. That's not a problem with wired networks, where it's possible to have every port be full wirespeed.

      Wireless connectivity supplements, it doesn't replace, hardwired connections.

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    4. Re:Wireless mania continues. by heinousjay · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Good thing there's no progress being made in wireless networking, or you could end up looking like a fool.

      --
      Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
  5. Hold off.... by The_Black_Rabite · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Like anything else, it will be unstable for the first year, then become mainstream. No reason to "get ready..."

  6. Nah, keep the incompatible stuff by Kris_J · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A house decked out in "pre-N" or "draft-N" stuff that isn't compatible with anything from any other manufacturers sounds like an excellent extra step in security. If you're out and about, most of this stuff will happily drop to G or B.

  7. What do the standards bodies do with this? by bmetz · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I never understood how people can be involved in the standards process while simultaneously allowed to undermine it. This seems like a strongarm tactic to me.

    --
    What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
  8. Re:Wire Rule of Thumb: ~$100 / spot by shawngarringer · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Or you drill the lines through the floor in a corner of the room for rooms on the first floor, or through a furnace pipe, or return air vent on upper floors. Its really not as hard as you make it out. I installed cable for a living, and new or old never met a place I couldn't run a coax line to in less than 20 minutes with anything but a drill and some fish tape. -Shawn