The folks over at TG Daily have been having good luck with not requiring registration for using their Comments feature. So far, at least, they haven't been overwhelmed with usual load of spam postings that such things usually bring.
You would think from having had four networked storage articles in a row that we've morphed into something else. The truth is just that we've recently been swamped witih NASes and are just trying to keep up with the flow.
Apologies to those of you who have been trying to find the new Router and NAS charts. The new charts have different URLs and I thought I had forwarding working for all of the old versions of the URLs. But apparently I didn't.
So this morning I spent some quality time with mod_rewrite and things should be working fine now. If you for some reason hit a chart link and don't get the chart, send me the bad URL and I'll get it fixed.
Updated 6 February 2007 with Buffalo responses.
As I described in my last post, Draft 1.10 is a big step forward for 802.11n in terms of compatibility with existing 802.11 b/g wireless networks. It's so significant, that I'll be backing off my pledge of no reviews of draft 11n products and reviewing 1.10 compliant gear when it starts shipping.
In both private discussions and during the Intel draft 11n chipset webcast, I have been hearing hints about 11n's "bad neighbor" problem having been addressed in draft 1.10. I was able to get Atheros' CTO, Bill McFarland on the phone to bring me up to speed on what actually got into the 1.10 draft. Note that some of these mechanisms were being debated back when Draft 1.0 was being finalized. But since consensus couldn't be reached, the 11n task force punted and didn't include any of them in 1.0.
Tuesday's entry by Intel into the draft 11n market was a bit of a surprise, given its history with being late to the party with previous wireless LAN product generations. But the 11n train left the station awhile ago and Intel, like any other company wanting to stay in the WLAN game, had to get on board, draft status or not.
But aside from lending legitamacy to a technology that has so far been most notable for further decreasing the chance of an average consumer having a successful wireless networking experience, and for getting reviewers' and pundits' shorts in a knot (myself included), Intel did something else. Something that, in my opinion, they didn't play up enough in their announcement material or webcast / conference call, and that deserves special mention.
You would think from Atheros' statement released today announcing the approval of 802.11n draft 1.10 that it's all over except for the sound of champagne corks popping in terms of having 802.11n products that consumers can buy without fear.
But it is not.
Yes, today's vote is good news since it advances the ball toward the end goal, which is still over a year away. But if you already own draft 11n gear, you should not assume that it is only a few firmware and driver upgrades away from being equivalent to products that will roll off the production lines over the coming months. And the same goes for gear currently sitting on the shelf at your favorite retailer.