New technology makes its way into our hands so fast that sometimes even the company selling it doesn't have time to update its final published specs. At least that's the way it appears with the new Core 2 Duo iMac. A few users have reported some unexpected details when running Vista on their Core 2 Duo.

What looks wrong here? Namely a network card that supports 802.11n in addition to the advertised b/g standards. A reader identified the card to be a Broadcom card which "works across all 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g and draft-802.11n solutions. Intensi-fi is Broadcom's implementation of the 802.11n draft specification and the industry's first draft-802.11n solutions. Intensi-fi technology delivers superior performance and robust wireless connectivity throughout a home or office, enabling next-generation Wi-Fi devices to support voice, video and data applications. Intensi-fi chipsets are also designed to be compatible with existing 802.11a/b/g products."

So why the advertised limitation in Mac OS X? One suggestion was that 802.11n is not supported yet, possibly requiring Vista's latest drivers to unlock 802.11n mode in the Broadcom network card. While this is merely speculation, it's a fact that companies update and replace internal stock hardware with "equal or better" components at time due to availability and cost. So we guess that the moral of this story is to not be surprised if your Core 2 Duo (or other devices) magically start accepting new formats.