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ASUS Guarantees Draft-N Upgradability
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."
You really get a nice band for your buck with A in a crowded area. Dorms or big cities are full of B/G devices hogging up the spectrum. Switch to A and watch your real world speeds jump up quite a bit. It works like a charm in my apartment.
Tim Smith - Ramblings from Nerd Land
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...
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Several computer makers now bake draft-n adapters into their laptops as an option .......I'm waiting for the brownie option myself
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.
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.
I've been using wireless for several years (who here on /. hasn't??) and this seems to be a solution looking for a problem.
... 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.
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
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