We earlier wrote that the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the group responsible for formalizing standards relating to WiFi, among others, has come up with draft specifications for the 802.11 N. What’s getting people so excited about the “N” spec is that it’s supposed to go as fast as 600 Megabits per second. That’s more than ten times the speed of a regular Wireless “G” standard device, which maxes out at 54 Megabits per second—and actual throughput of which is usually half the rated speed.

While the IEEE’s finalizing the 802.11 N specification is still a year away at most, WiFi chipmakers are already creating and marketing devices with the draft “N” spec. And some users are giving rave reviews about the speed and range—WiFi N could even become the wide-range wireless LAN standard. But the rational beings we are, we believe it’s worth waiting before spending on a pre-N device.

It basically boils down to our need for speed. Frankly, 600 Mbps or even 300 Mbps seems to be overkill even with today’s broadband Internet speeds. Unless you’re living in Japan or South Korea, where 100 Mbps residential broadband Internet is the norm (wow!), you are not likely to enjoy any observable speed difference in Web browsing or downloading with a faster WiFi connection at home. So if your DSL connection maxes out at 10 Mbps, then even an 11 Mbps “B” spec WiFi adaptor would suit you well.

However, if you are setting up a home entertainment system, and you plan to zap movies and other multimedia across devices, say from your computer hard disc to your wide-screen, high-definition television set, for instance, it might be worth looking into pre-N. This might also be a worthy choice if you exchange large sets of files across computers, such as when editing videos.

So how fast do you really need to go? That will probably be the first question to ask when considering WiFi equipment. Second is how much are you willing to spend? Chances are, you would strike a good price-to-performance balance with the “G” spec—at least for the next few months until other groundbreaking technologies come up.