Wireless N + Bluetooth into Single Card by Atheros

Atheros has recently come up with a mini card which combines both wireless N (150Mbps) and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR into one single chip. It is not uncommon to see few netbook vendors still pumping out netbooks without Wireless N and Bluetooth. The card offers a Wireless-N connection up to 150Mbps (single-stream, as opposed to 300Mbps in other dual-stream Wireless-N solutions found mostly in desktop computers).

This new combination transforms the mobile computing experience to enable a wide array of simultaneous wireless applications on the same device. For example, a netbook will be able to support concurrent audio and data transfer applications such as playback on Bluetooth-enabled speakers of music from a laptop, while browsing the Internet and syncing a smartphone’s contact database. The mini-card is named AR9002WB-1NGB and it will support Linux, Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.