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WiFi

WiFi

ASUS unveils first Wireless ac laptop

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Adam Oxford at

Over at Computex in Taiwan, ASUS has has been showing off the world's first laptop equipped with 802.11ac wireless networking, the next iteration in the WiFi standard that theoretically promises up to 6.93Gbps speeds over the air.

The laptop in question is the latest version of ASUS' 17inch G-series gaming notebooks, dubbed the G75VW. It comes with an Ivy Bridge CPU and Nvidia's GeForce GTX 670M graphics and is slightly lighter than last year's G74SX, although in much the same way as a nine bricks are lighter than 10 – you wouldn't want to have to carry either around with you all day.


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Your next home network might feature lasers

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Adam Oxford at

Trying to work out whether ethernet, powerlines or wireless is the way forward for reducing your ping time? They're so old fashioned you might as well be playing by mail. In the not too distant future we're going to be gaming by laser.

Or at least, we will if Researchers at Taiwan's National Taipei University of Technology have their way. They've been working on ways to connect PC to router using lasers, and have discovered that they can create faster-than-WiFi optical links using the kinds of laser pointers you get free in a Christmas cracker.


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Are Intel planning talking routers?

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Adam Oxford at

Tied of your boringly quiet peripherals? Nostalgic for the days when hardware made a proper noise? Do you long for your SSDs to chirrup like a tape loading ZX Spectrum, or your keyboard to click like an old IBM model M?

Seems you are not alone in your antipathy towards the dull silence of the modern microcomputer. According to a report on New Scientist, Intel has just filed a patent for WiFi routers and dongles that can literally talk to each other.


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Is it the end for ethernet?

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Adam Oxford at

Our favourite networking alphanumeric is 802.11n, but only when it comes to web surfing and watching videos online. Dual band routers and multiple antennas are fine as far as they go, but you can still spot the house of a gamer by the ethernet cables that trail loosely up the stairs.

Are the days of wirefree gaming finally upon us? Chip manufacturer Broadcom reckons it is.


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