Lenovo burns draft cards; puts Atheros 802.11n in ThinkPads

Atheros_80211nAtheros 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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