Intel Centrino vs Broadcom MaxPerformance
MaxPerformance? who came up with that name. Centrino sounds way cooler.
Anyways.. due to the wonders of mass production, etc.. laptops are slowly edging their way towards the end user customisability of desktop PCs. RAM is a standard size. Mini-PCI, video cards are all pretty standard. CPUs are pin compatible if you stay within the family. Drives are usually interchangeable.
Because of this, I was able to upgrade my internal wireless card on my laptop in a matter of minutes (far more easily than swapping out a desktop’s PCI card). The Centrino one is great and all but it has some known compatibility issues with a bunch of routers, including my girlfriends. I eventually got annoyed enough that I bought a Dell TrueMobile 1300 that uses the Broadcom chipset.
Benefits of the TrueMobile 1300: 1) 802.11g - potentially faster than the Intel’s 802.11b. 2) What appears to be better reception, but who knows, we may be inching towards “signal strength inflation” as reported by the drivers. 3) Compatability. I don’t actually know if it’ll work better with my girlfriend’s router, but it’s hard for me to imagine it performing worse. Let’s see.. Broadcom, a company that only makes networking equipment, or Intel? Broadcom doesn’t have Intel leverage or weight (or marketing dollars), and as a network only company they would probably get beat up a lot more by the press if their hardware was found to have incompatabilities with other equipment.
Anyways.. it was cool that I could easily upgrade my laptop. And hopefully it’ll be for the better.