Santa Rosa: Crave goes hands on with the new Centrino

Wireless capabilities
The new Centrino supports all the usual 802.11b and 802.11g Wi-Fi networks, as you'd expect. But Intel has upped the wireless ante by adding support for the draft 802.11n standard. Unlike 802.11b and 802.11g, which offer connection speeds of 11Mbps and 54Mbps respectively, 802.11n goes to a monstrous theoretical maximum of 300Mbps.

Santa Rosa laptops will use Intel's new Wireless Wi-Fi Link 4965AGN card, which is said to use less power than Intel's previous Wi-Fi cards. It also uses MIMO (multiple in multiple out) trickery, where multiple data streams are sent concurrently in order to boost throughput.

Crave's test results
300Mbps sounds awesome, but you'll never achieve that kind of transfer speed in the real world. We'd expect it to perform in line with a 100Mbps wired Ethernet, which is still pretty good compared to clunky old Wi-Fi.

It's worth noting that in order to be MIMO-ready, your new Centrino laptop needs to have three antennae built into the chassis. Unfortunately manufacturers can gain Centrino accreditation with just two antennae, so MIMO is not guaranteed across the range.