Sure, WiMax technology is still pretty young in the US and odds are it isn’t available in your area yet. But if you happen to live in an area that’s about to be blanketed in wireless WiMax broadband or if you just want to be ready if and when it arrives in your neck of the woods, it looks like laptop makers are finally starting to build WiMax support right into laptops.
Laptop Magazine’s Mark Spoonauer is attending the XOHM launch event in Baltimore, and he got a chance to check out a couple of laptops with internal WiMax modules. No USB or ExpressCard dongles necessary.
One of the laptops with WiMax built in? An Acer Aspire One. Spoonauer got a chance to try out the WiMax enabled netbook and found that it took a few seconds to get online video from Hulu to start playing, but once they were started video playback was smooth.
Spoonauer says Speedtest.net reported that he was getting speeds of 6.7 Mbps for downloads and 2.8 Mbps for uploads.
It’s not clear at the moment whether Acer plans to release a WiMax-capable Aspire One in the US or if this was just a test unit.
I saw Mark at the event but I didn’t see a WiMax Aspire One (though I did see ‘normal’ One in the crowd…). Also saw Kevin’s Wind and a few other liliputers. Does a small Sony Vaio count? Also saw plenty of Nokia N810 WiMax devices, but I guess those fall below a lilliputer in size.