Asante has announced the AeroLAN AL5402-XG, a new 802.11g wireless card for PowerBook users. Like Apple’s AirPort Extreme products, the card utilizes the new IEEE 802.11g standard, allowing wireless data transfers of up to 54 Mbps (5 times faster than 802.11b). The AL5402-XG takes advantage of the the CardBus interface found on recent PowerBooks, and offers high-gain 15.5 dBm design (extends wireless connection range), a built-in site manager, support for both 64-bit and 128-bit Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) encryption, and backwards-compatibility with the older IEEE 802.11b standard. The US$99 card will ship in July and requires Mac OS X 10.2.6 and AirPort software 3.1 or later.
