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Dell offering draft-802.11n card for notebooks
Like many consumers, Dell is getting a little sick of waiting around for the IEEE's Task Group N to pull it together and roll out a final version of the next-gen WiFi standard, so the company has decided to start offering its own draft-802.11n card in all XPS and select Inspiron laptops. As you're probably already aware, 802.11n will be a wireless networking protocol that uses MIMO technology to offer greater range and speed than traditional 802.11a/b/g networks, but has been famously bogged down by delays and questions of interoperability. Dell's implementation comes in the form of its redundantly-named Wireless 1500 Draft 802.11n dual-band wireless card, which utilizes Broadcom's Intensi-fi flavor of draft-N -- available in such products as Netgear's RangeMax Next lineup -- to provide those desirable performance boosts. Usually we'd recommend that you wait to take the plunge until the dust settles and a final standard is announced, but since that may not happen in our lifetimes and Dell's backwards-compatible card is only $59 (or less, plus the cost of a router), it doesn't sound too risky to give this option a try.[Via Notebook Review]
Netgear intros RangeMax Next "draft spec" 802.11n products
We're not sure how this is much different than all those pre-n routers that have been floating around for a while, since a device that holds to the draft specifications of 802.11n still has quite a slim chance to actually work with official 802.11n devices. But that's not stopping Netgear from releasing a new line of RangeMax Next wireless products, which tout 300Mbps speeds and HD video streaming power. The WNR854T router supports gigabit Ethernet, while both the router and WN511T use MIMO (multi-in, multi-out) to reach those 802.11n speeds. It seems we've waited so long for 802.11n products that it has lost a lot of its appeal, but we're sure Netgear will find a way to keep busy.
