Interesting link about RT-AC87U

[Sky1111]

Folks, just FYI:

http://pcdiy.asus.com/2014/01/rt-ac87u-the-ultimate-router-4x4-mu-mimo-ces-2014/

Looks like they are still working on it and it is not close to shipping unfortunately, BUT there is something interesting:

(posted by JJ who seems to be ASUS rep)

"Any specification support cannot be commented at this time due to it still being under design and development. Additionally we are currently developing a new version of ASUS WRT outside of the current released we build upon. This new version will feature a significant number of feature enhancements so stay tuned."

I assume Merlin is already aware of that new release... I wonder if the current routers will get it too...

 

[L&LD]

Sky1111,

Great find!

I wonder what RMerlin can/can't say to this?

 

[IAAI]

They really need a good one before spring or Linksys is going to take over with their new WRT series and their open source FW

 

[sm00thpapa]

Dude that's old, posted before and the AC1900WRT is old technology and made by Belkin. AC87U will be AC2300 and Belkin just coming out with an AC1900 router. A little behind the power curve I would say.

 

[IAAI]

Dude that's old, posted before and the AC1900WRT is old technology and made by Belkin. AC87U will be AC2300 and Belkin just coming out with an AC1900 router. A little behind the power curve I would say.

First let Asus Fix their AC68 then we ll talk about the AC87

in my opinion sometimes you need to set back and improve the product you are selling before introducing a new one , no one is going to benefit from the new one until 4x4 clients come up and i m sure it ll take long . By the way there isn't much 3x3 clients till now .

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/other/ces-2014/32309-asus-ac2300-router-coming

somehow this reminds me of Samsung and Apple competition

Samsung is jumping on unstable surface (sometimes it works sometimes it does not) and you have to go back to the roots if it dose not
Apple is taking it step by step (solid steps) making sure that every function is effective and worthy .

 

[cmillar6]

I have purchased two expensive Asus laptops in the past year and both have come with cheap single band wifi cards in them. Kind of ironic they are so aggressive with developing new technology for their routers yet sell their laptops with wifi cards that aren't even dual band yet alone 3x3 and 4x4 capable.

 

[RMerlin]

I have purchased two expensive Asus laptops in the past year and both have come with cheap single band wifi cards in them. Kind of ironic they are so aggressive with developing new technology for their routers yet sell their laptops with wifi cards that aren't even dual band yet alone 3x3 and 4x4 capable.

Thankfully they don't use BIOS-based whitelists. My K53E got upgraded to a Centrino 6230, and now a 7260 AC.

 

[Sky1111]

On the same forum I am trying to convince JJ that ASUS needs to make massive improvements... BCM4709 is not good enough for uber expensive router in 2015... it was great for 2013, but not for 2015...

The only hope we have is that the massive overhaul of ASUS WRT will bring massive performance and feature optimizations... yes I know wishful thinking

 

[KGB7]

I have purchased two expensive Asus laptops in the past year and both have come with cheap single band wifi cards in them. Kind of ironic they are so aggressive with developing new technology for their routers yet sell their laptops with wifi cards that aren't even dual band yet alone 3x3 and 4x4 capable.

If you look around, most companies this days are all about bragging rights. Its a constant race to come out with newest, fastest shiny toy.

Asus doesnt make mini PCIe wifi cards. Heck, the mini wifi cards are on the back burner. You have many AC USB adapters, yet only one Intel AC card. That is a clear indication, that companies dont care.

Expensive is subjective.

Dont forget the cost factor. If Your laptop came with the very best wifi card, then you would pay a lot more for your laptop. Then it would be Very Expensive.

From what i have seen so far, looking at many brand of laptops, many dont even have a Gigabit NIC card, let a lone a decent wifi card. My dell laptop was $800, yet the wifi card is a 2.4Ghz single band with a 100Mbps LAN NIC.

 

[cmillar6]

Thankfully they don't use BIOS-based whitelists. My K53E got upgraded to a Centrino 6230, and now a 7260 AC.

At least the wireless card is replaceable in your model. I just took the access cover off the back of my new X550 and it provides access to RAM and the HDD, that's it. The wireless card is buried somewhere else in the laptop and I'm not interested in taking the entire laptop apart to find it. I'm considering purchasing one of the USB adapters but I just know it will get snapped off and break.

 

[RMerlin]

If you look around, most companies this days are all about bragging rights. Its a constant race to come out with newest, fastest shiny toy.

Asus doesnt make mini PCIe wifi cards. Heck, the mini wifi cards are on the back burner. You have many AC USB adapters, yet only one Intel AC card. That is a clear indication, that companies dont care.

Expensive is subjective.

Dont forget the cost factor. If Your laptop came with the very best wifi card, then you would pay a lot more for your laptop. Then it would be Very Expensive.

From what i have seen so far, looking at many brand of laptops, many dont even have a Gigabit NIC card, let a lone a decent wifi card. My dell laptop was $800, yet the wifi card is a 2.4Ghz single band with a 100Mbps LAN NIC.

The problem is, more advanced customers like us know that a 802.11ac mini PCI-e is less than 30$ at retail price. So if you factor the volume discount manufacturers such as Asus would get, and compare that to the price paid for the 150 Mbits card, we're probably looking at a 10$-15$ price increase. If you are also trying to sell routers (like Asus does), then I would expect any laptop but their low-end, sub-600$ products, to come with at least a dual band capable interface.

On the other hand... I can tell from first-hand experience with my own customers that for the vast majority of customers, they don't even KNOW there are different speeds available. Heck, even just a few know about the difference between 802.11g and 802.11n. They ask for wifi connectivity, and it ends there. So, I can understand why manufacturers might not want to increase the base cost of their mid-range product for an improvement that the majority of customers wouldn't even know about.

Different manufacturers seem to have different views on which feature aren't worth the extra cost. Two other cases that come to mind:

- Fast Ethernet vs Gigabit Ethernet (as already pointed out). Some manufacturers like Asus or Lenovo will always push gigabit. I see a few others who will still push a lot of Fast Ethernet (I can't remember if it was HP or Toshiba that used to do that a lot last year)

- Low resolution webcams. Compare the resolution of Asus's webcams versus any other manufacturers. Asus still pushes a lot of 0.3 Megapixels webcam - or at least they did last time I noticed it last year, accross most of their products.

This is one thing Apple got right: technical specifications don't matter for the mainstream customer. They want a device that does "X, Y and Z", rather than "X at this level of performance, Y at this level of performance, and Z at that level of performance".

A lot of my own customers still can't tell the difference between RAM and HDD size.

 

[Sky1111]

All of the above is true. BUT there is something else should be taken into consideration: power consumption.

3x3 wifi module most likely will drain more battery than 1x1. ALL laptop manufacturers understand that even the most technologically challenged customers can tell the difference on how long does the laptop runs on battery. And when it comes to power consumption, every mWt counts. You will not believe how much effort is put into reducing power consumption of GPUs for example; so I assume the same care it put into every aspect.

Lower power consumption means the laptop manufacturer can put smaller battery and still get some acceptable battery life.

 

[RMerlin]

All of the above is true. BUT there is something else should be taken into consideration: power consumption.

3x3 wifi module most likely will drain more battery than 1x1. ALL laptop manufacturers understand that even the most technologically challenged customers can tell the difference on how long does the laptop runs on battery. And when it comes to power consumption, every mWt counts. You will not believe how much effort is put into reducing power consumption of GPUs for example; so I assume the same care it put into every aspect.

True, but then we have manufacturers like Broadcom telling people that phones with 802.11ac interfaces will have better battery life than those with older 802.11n interfaces, on the basis that data transfers take less time, and therefore less power to complete. I must say I always had doubt about this claim since multiple simultaneous streams probably uses more power than a single stream, but they might have been talking about 2x2 n vs 2x2 ac, for example.

 

[KGB7]

The problem is, more advanced customers like us know that a 802.11ac mini PCI-e is less than 30$ at retail price. So if you factor the volume discount manufacturers such as Asus would get, and compare that to the price paid for the 150 Mbits card, we're probably looking at a 10$-15$ price increase. If you are also trying to sell routers (like Asus does), then I would expect any laptop but their low-end, sub-600$ products, to come with at least a dual band capable interface.

On the other hand... I can tell from first-hand experience with my own customers that for the vast majority of customers, they don't even KNOW there are different speeds available. Heck, even just a few know about the difference between 802.11g and 802.11n. They ask for wifi connectivity, and it ends there. So, I can understand why manufacturers might not want to increase the base cost of their mid-range product for an improvement that the majority of customers wouldn't even know about.

Different manufacturers seem to have different views on which feature aren't worth the extra cost. Two other cases that come to mind:

- Fast Ethernet vs Gigabit Ethernet (as already pointed out). Some manufacturers like Asus or Lenovo will always push gigabit. I see a few others who will still push a lot of Fast Ethernet (I can't remember if it was HP or Toshiba that used to do that a lot last year)

- Low resolution webcams. Compare the resolution of Asus's webcams versus any other manufacturers. Asus still pushes a lot of 0.3 Megapixels webcam - or at least they did last time I noticed it last year, accross most of their products.

This is one thing Apple got right: technical specifications don't matter for the mainstream customer. They want a device that does "X, Y and Z", rather than "X at this level of performance, Y at this level of performance, and Z at that level of performance".

A lot of my own customers still can't tell the difference between RAM and HDD size.

What you and i pay for an item on ebay is not the same price what many manufacturers charge their customers. If you want a better X part on your PC/laptop, then you get charged extra and its called an option. And you dont pay $10 more, at times you get charged $50 for a $5 part. Because people are ignorant, and companies are in business to make money.


Things such as more RAM or SSD drives are almost double in price when you configure your computer on a manufacturers website, yet you can buy same item for half the price on newegg or amazon. Its like charging extra for Nitrogen to be put in your tires, even though Air is 78 percent nitrogen. Its a bloody rip off, yet people are happy to hand off over their money.

Or paying $20 to a handyman to change a single light bulb in your kitchen.

 

[Paralel]

Nitrogen in tires is kinda stupid, but certain noble gases, that's a different story.

 

[JW0914]

Dont forget the cost factor. If Your laptop came with the very best wifi card, then you would pay a lot more for your laptop. Then it would be Very Expensive.

From what i have seen so far, looking at many brand of laptops, many dont even have a Gigabit NIC card, let a lone a decent wifi card. My dell laptop was $800, yet the wifi card is a 2.4Ghz single band with a 100Mbps LAN NIC.

This is simply factually incorrect. Take the Intel 7260 ac mini PCIe, it's $30 and it would be cheaper from a computer manufacturer due to their wholesale pricing.

As far as LAN 100 vs 1000, it becomes a bit more complicated. 1000 chipsets aren't much more expensive than 100 chipsets; the complication, however, comes in with the fact LAN chipsets are almost always integrated directly into the motherboard of laptops, making it impossible to upgrade the LAN port. Why manufacturers like ASUS still sell 10/100 vs 10/100/1000 boggles the mind for two reasons: 1. 10/100 is obsolete, even more so now that XP is no longer supported. 2. there's no substantial price difference in between the two chipsets.

If you're buying a laptop, you're better off buying a version of the model with a 10/100/1000 LAN, otherwise you're creating a larger problem for yourself. All routers today come with 10/100/1000 LAN ports, however, hook a 10/100 LAN up to one of the ports and you slow down everything else on your network that connects through your 10/100 LAN device by at least 90%. In other words, you can shell out $300 for a top of the line AC router, but you'll cripple it and your entire network by running a device with a 10/100 LAN.