Dell's wireless choice as simple as a, b, g

Dell has responded to customer demands for more networking flexibility by offering a choice of wireless technologies in its latest laptops.

There is a growing group of confusing 802.11 standards, which use different transmission frequencies and speeds.

Dell hopes to capture the market for business people who regularly travel and need to switch between the 'a', 'b' and 'g' standards.

The company is offering the choice of Intel's Centrino wireless technology, which currently cannot switch between standards, or its own hybrid TrueMobile card, which can automatically roam between different frequencies.

Jonathan Powell, Dell's European Latitude brand manager, told vnunet.com that offering users an option is key to the take up of wireless local area networking.

"Wireless local area networking is a bit of an alphabet soup," he said. "The key to making it widespread is to give people a choice that allows them to future-proof their machines."

The option is available in Dell's Latitude business notebooks, the first two of which were launched this month. A further two models are due out later in the spring.

Dell claims that users will notice little difference between its proprietary TrueMobile solution and Centrino, bar the extra flexibility.

Both will boast the Pentium M855PM chipset (formerly code-named Banias), but whereas Centrino currently only offers 802.11b wireless networking capability, TrueMobile can handle 'a', 'b' and 'g'.

It is offering a choice of two TrueMobile cards: the 1300, which operates at 'b' and 'g'; and the 1400, which additionally runs across 'a'.

"Having just the 'b' wireless option limits users to a download speed of 11Mbps rather than being able to take advantage of the 54Mbps offered by 802.11g," said Powell.

"An 802.11a card offers download speed of 54Mbps as well, but as it uses the 5GHz radio frequency it is more commonly used in the US."

Intel plans to launch both an 802.11b and 'g' option later this year.

However, IDC questioned how successful Dell's strategy will be, pointing out that Intel has more clout and an established brand name.

Analyst Andy Brown said: "Dell is well placed and flexible enough to carry this off. To what extent it will drag people away from OEMs only offering a Centrino-based notebook is debatable.

"With Wi-Fi hotspots there are compatibility issues and Intel will be marketing Centrino with stability and compatibility in mind.

"So it will also be pushing Wi-Fi and will brand hotspots as being compatible with its technology."