Next-gen PCMCIA: Expresscard

An anonymous reader writes "According to this article at WindowsForDevices, the PCMCIA trade association rolled out version 1.0 of its next-generation standard for modular mobile and desktop computer expansion at this week's Intel Developer Forum in San Jose, CA. Dubbed "ExpressCard", the new standard is "thinner, lighter, faster" than the group's previous PC Card standards, according to PCMCIA chairman Brad Saunders. ExpressCard achieves its space reduction by replacing the legacy parallel buses of the first and second generation PCMCIA card standards with state-of-the-art, high-speed serial connections, following a trend common in current computer system design."

Comments

PCMCIA

[xybe]

PCMCIA: People Cannot Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms

What a preposterous design

[cryptochrome]

So what we have here are two cards of different widths, with a connector that's the same width. Here's what'll happen:

1) People will accidentally buy 54mm cards without realizing it won't fit in their 34mm slots
2) When you put a 34mm card in your 54 mm slot, your device will either have a big gap next to the card or will have to use an alkward and twice as expensive double door
3) The 22mm notch on the 54mm card will get caught on things and could possibly even be a weak point.
4) People won't realize that 34mm cards will work in their 54mm slot, or try to put it in on the wrong side, and such.
5) 5mm won't be thick enough for a variety of purposes
6) One of these card formats will be effectively abandoned (54mm) and the other will be widely adopted (34mm), obviating the work on the abandoned design and leaving a legacy of unsupported formats to confuse people on ebay auctions and such.

The logical thing to do would be what they do now: have single and double height cards, that work in a double slot.

This is stupid. But I have a better idea...

[laird]

I can't figure out what application this would make sense for.

For desktop machines, these compact cards are too expensive (compared to dirt cheap PCI cards) so nobody will use this for adding devices to their desktop machines, just they way they don't use PCMCIA cards on desktop machines now.

For laptops, almost everything is built in. Ethernet, modem, wireless, optical drive.

And what isn't built in can be added using CF cards. Sure, very few laptops have CF card slots built in, but none of them have these new PC card slots built in. And CF is becoming pretty standard for adding new capabilities (bluetooth, 890.11, ethernet, etc.) to high-end PDA's. And manufacturers aren't going to replace CF card slots with these much larger cards.

And for more limited uses (RAM cards) there is SD/MMC.

So I think that it's more likely that manufacturers will start putting CF and SD/MMC slots into laptops than that they add these new card slots.

Rather than introduce a new slot for portable devices, why not introduce a decent expansion mechanism for _desktop_ computers? There, consumers have to unscrew cases, plug fragile cards into slots, etc., -- there would be some real benefit in a consumer friendly desktop expansion mechanism. If people could upgrade their video card (for example) by pulling a cartridge out of a slot and snapping in a new one, everyone wins! I don't think it'd cost much (plastic shell, doors and guides in the cases). Ditto for optical drives -- I've never understood by laptops can swap optical drives, etc., but not desktops. Sure, it'd cost a tiny bit more, but think how much easier it would be to sell upgrades to consumers if they didn't have to crawl into an electrified box!

Re:This is stupid. But I have a better idea...

[Cheeze]

makes sense.

I always wondered what the cost savings in a $20 pci network card were over a $25 cardbus network card. Sure, the obvious $5 difference is important, but what about the money (time is money) it takes for a trained computer hardware monkey to shutdown the machine, take all of the cables out and take off the top of the computer, plug in a pci network card, and boot back up? I bet it costs more than $5.

Having something like a compact flash card instead of a pcmcia/cardbus card would be beneficial also, as it is smaller, and you should be able to fit more of them in the same sized space. They also use less power than pci/pcmcia/cardbus since they are typically geared towards a PDA. I wonder if you could stack them vertical in a 5 1/4 computer bay, how many you would be able to fit in a row.

Introducing one more plug-in interface type just muddies the water. What kind of interfaces is your next computer going to have?

isa,pci,pcmcia,agp,vga,CF,MM,SD,IDE,WI-FI,USB,Fi re Wire,PS2,IRDA,DVD-RW?