Lenovo burns draft cards; puts Atheros 802.11n in ThinkPads
Atheros announced today that their XSPAN 802.11n draft wireless chipsets will start appearing in Lenovo ThinkPads, specifically the T60, R60, X60 and Z61 notebooks. This follows Apple’s ever-so-sneaky inclusion of 802.11n pre-draft functionality in the new MacBook Pros, so we’re sensing a trend here. The long and short of it: wireless chipset manufacturers and computer OEMs are "burning draft cards" everywhere and ploppin’ the increased throughput into anything and everything.
Joking aside: I’d strongly caution any computer or networking equipment purchase based on the draft specification UNLESS the manufacturer guarantees compatibility with the approved spec via a firmware update. Assuming all goes with with the spec, Atheros indicates the chipset using XSPAN technology will provide wireless bandwidth up to 300 Mbps on, but it’s a safe but to cut that number by 50% in a real world application due to network protocol overhead and radio interference.
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