ExpressCards, the new PCMCIA?

randallpowell writes "PC Cards will face competition from ExpressCards in 2005 and 2006. Newer notebook PCs will have them to add wireless, HD-TV broadcast viewing, back-up storage, and more. Microsoft, Dell, and Intel are the major backers of this new expansion slot technology. While smaller, they can easily help users expand their notebook's abilities while PC Cards slowly phase out."

Comments

But I already have an express card

[Timesprout]

In fact I never leave home without it but it fuxored my laptop when I inserted it.

I don't get it

[dsginter]

Is the goal of everything to eventually become a choking hazzard? What was wrong with the old PCMCIA infrastructure? Why not just add some additional bandwidth and be done with it?

What we need is a good upgradeable PCI standard for desktops so that people can slide their cards in without opening the case. *That* would be innovative...

Re:I don't get it

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The standard PC slot cards are expensive enough as it is, I wonder why try to shrink it even more. There aren't a whole lot of TV tuners, much less HD tuners for PCMCIA, I wonder what about Express card will make those more available. HDTV doesn't need slot bandwidth unless maybe if it is decoded on-card, the broadcast bitstream is only 20Mbps.

Maybe I'll be interested if they actually bother to put more than two slots on laptops. It's bad enough that so many laptops seem to have only one mini-pci slot and one Cardbus slot.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they think that the way USB devices work in Windows is a good idea...
I don't really care, it may not even fly because of a lot of people may not want to blow another $60 on a wireless card, or usb.

But what it probably is, is a cheap way to make it look more costly so they can increase the profit margin...

Re:I don't get it

[Figaro]

I know this is unrealistic, but if you'd read the article you would have found out that this is an extension of PCI Express and PC manufacturers would like to extend this to Desktop PC's.

Re:I don't get it

[bishr]

PCMCIA was based on ISA architecture; they've already bumped the bandwidth several times, but it pales in comparison to desktop bus speeds.

I look at this as being analagous to moving to PCIe, which definitely bothered some folks; backwards compatabiity is sometimes more trouble than it's worth, and that's why PCI express and, quite possibly ExpressCards too, will probably win out over the next few years.

A touch of history (wiki's not working for me, so this'll have to do):
http://www.quatech.com/support/comm-over-pcm cia.ph p

Re:I don't get it

[AKnightCowboy]

Is the goal of everything to eventually become a choking hazzard?

I've yet to choke on the xD card for my camera, but then again, I don't put them in my mouth either.

Re:I don't get it

[jabber01]

Just wait until your dentist offers crowns with a built-in digital camera. But then, it'll probably have WiFi too.

Re:I don't get it

[orangepeel]

What we need is a good upgradeable PCI standard for desktops so that people can slide their cards in without opening the case.

If they slide in easily, presumably they would be just as easily removed. That's a good idea for home users perhaps, but can you imagine all the expansion cards that would so easily disappear at businesses and schools?

Re:I don't get it

[Rude Turnip]

Now the PC manufacturers will be able to sell "secured workstations" to schools and businesses for a premium. They will be "secured" in the sense that the expansion cards will be hidden behind a panel locked by a key.

Re:I don't get it

[QuantumRiff]

The problem with PCMCIA was the name:
"People Can't Memorize Computer Industy Acronyms".

It was kinda rude..

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

What we need is a good upgradeable PCI standard for desktops so that people can slide their cards in without opening the case. *That* would be innovative...

PCMCIA is an extension of the PCI bus to support hot-swappable devices. Orignally it was more an extension of ISA, but Cardbus is essentially hotswappable PCI.

Re:I don't get it

[magarity]

Is the goal of everything to eventually become a choking hazzard?

What you call a 'choking hazard' the manufacturer calls 'uses less materials and is therefore cheaper to produce and thus less expensive for the consumer'.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Not primarily aimed at the desktop market, but InfiniBand is already here.

Re:I don't get it

[imsabbel]

it doesnt pale compared to desktop
The original pcmcia was 8 bit 8 mhz.
But a few years ago they renamed it to pc-card and did a major change: they are now more or less pci-level.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

They call it 'bluetooth.' :)

Re:I don't get it

[Desert Raven]

What you call a 'choking hazard' the manufacturer calls 'uses less materials and is therefore cheaper to produce and thus less expensive for the consumer'.

Materials costs usually represent the smallest part of the cost of making an item, especially in anything as small as a card. In fact, smaller form factors can increase production costs, due to the greater precision needed to make it.

What the manufacturer really calls it is: 'inventing another incompatible form-factor so people can't use their old kit, forcing them to buy replacements for their otherwise perfectly good hardware.'

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

They make PCMCIA expansion's which attach to PCI slots...Most fit in a floppy disk bay, some I believe use a 5 1/4" bay.. perfect for small form factor pc's, in my opinion.

Re:I don't get it

[magarity]

Materials costs usually represent the smallest part of the cost of making an item, especially in anything as small as a card

You're mistaking small costs for immaterial costs; Recall Rambus memory. It's big appeal to manufacturers was lower pin count. Saving even just one dollar on materials when the automated assembly line churns out a million units at a time adds up to a million dollars in savings. Since the new card format is not only smaller but also has less pins, there will be several dollars per unit on the line in materials savings. Smaller form factors do not increase production costs as a blanket statement, although they usually require a new machine to produce. But that more than pays for itself in being a more efficient machine using less material to make a smaller widget more quickly. The up front cost of a new machine, which you've mistaken as being more costly to produce, recoups itself quickly.

If they really cared about new form factors for the sake of making consumers buy upgrades, my Athlon XP motherboard wouldn't have a parallel port on it.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Materials costs usually represent the smallest part of the cost of making an item, especially in anything as small as a card.

Au contraire. The PC Card standard requires 136 fragile, high-precision pin-and-socket electrical terminals. The plastic housings have be extremely precise to align the terminals, and not melt at temperature hot enough to melt lead-free solder. The card's connector sticks off the end of the circuit board, yet has to be held in place during surface mount soldering. If you produce a card with a plugged socket hole, it will ruin every host you plug it into. Oh, and the original connector couldn't handle the high frequencies needed for CardBus, so they had to make the outside of the card part of the signal path to get good enough grounding. The whole mess is expensive and unreliable. (I'm an electrical engineer who has designed PC Cards, so this aren't purely theoretical problems.)

In fact, smaller form factors can increase production costs, due to the greater precision needed to make it.

I couldn't find any good pictures, but it seems like ExpressCard will use largish USB-style sliding contacts. These will be vastly cheaper and more reliable than the tiny PC Card pin-and-socket system. The precision and alignment issues should be considerably easier. There will be less room for the engineer to work with inside the card, but that's less important these days with highly-integrated chips.

Incidentally, issues like this are why xD-Picture cards and similar approaches are going to become the universal for low-end cameras. CompactFlash uses the same type of nasty pins as PC Cards, and is therefore just as unreliable and expensive. Take apart an xD-Picture card: it's a tiny circuit board with the contacts made as part of the circuit board itself, a bare chip soldered directly to the other side of the board, molded plastic to protect the chip, and all that gets glued into the large plastic holder so the human hand will have something to hold. The contacts are large enough that it needs less alignment precision than PC Card! It's elegant engineering. The camera companies are saving millions by ditching CompactFlash.

Re:I don't get it

[shokk]

One of the neat things about the old dinosaur Sun hardware was that to add a card you just slid the new card into the chassis without opening anything up. Back then all the cards were super expensive and all the same size. Now, everything is different sizes, and some of the cards stick out further from the slot in all directions.

Instead, I imagine something more modular that looks like a brick or cassette tape with airflow holes wherever possible, taking up 1 or two slots, slides into the back of the PC and locks in place into a high density pin connector similar to what PC cards use in laptops. That same idea could be used for the front of the PC for drives (I've seen removable 5-1/4 drive bays for some time now) or card readers. You can then close a grillwork over it that is either stylized for the front, or covered in fans for the back.

Re:I don't get it

[dsginter]

I know this is unrealistic, but if you'd read the article you would have found out that this is an extension of PCI Express and PC manufacturers would like to extend this to Desktop PC's.

They're gonna put a video card on this solution? My point was that PCMCIA didn't need to be any smaller in order to be adapted to PCI-Express. By making this new format so small, they've pigeon-holed themselves into all but the smallest niches.

10:1 that you won't see this on the mainstream desktop for this very reason. It is too small.

Re:I don't get it

[whitis]

What we need is a good upgradeable PCI standard for desktops so that people can slide their cards in without opening the case.

If they slide in easily, presumably they would be just as easily removed. That's a good idea for home users perhaps, but can you imagine all the expansion cards that would so easily disappear at businesses and schools?

Just such a standard has existed for years, unfortunately desktop manufacturers did not adopt it so it remained expensive: CompactPCI. If it had been adopted at the consumer level the price could have come way down. It would always be a little more expensive than regular PCI (for trivial cards, at least) for the simple reason that you can't practically chop off half the PCB to cut costs.

Physical card security is a trivial problem. All you need is an optional locking rail that covers the bottom retaining screw on all the cards.

The drive towards miniaturization is driven by two things: cost and portability. The cost side of things is driven by board area and connector and IC pin counts. Even though greater precision is needed, in mass production smaller board size tends to cost less. By going to a serial interface instead of a parallel interface, the pin count on both the connector and the IC on the other side of that connector are drastically reduced. Even on desktop machines, people are pushing for smaller sizes. On the other hand, small volume specialty boards will be more expensive because of the space constraints (which hurts when you don't have chips that are almost a single chip solution) and packaging issues.

How slowly?

[Anonymous Coward]

It will take about same time that Wintel boxes abandon floppy drives.

And everybody know that it means forever.

Re:How slowly?

[Von Helmet]

Sure, that's why Wintel boxes still have 5 1/4" drives fitted as standard.

Re:How slowly?

[The Wicked Priest]

I just bought a Wintel box without a floppy drive (a Compaq Presario, not a custom job) about two weeks ago.

Re:Time to obsolete all cards

[mirko]

It's been less than this if you consider the SD-based expansion sticks.
I guess somebody's greed might be very satisfied, now.

Nooooooooo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft, Dell, and Intel = EVIL!

Re:Nooooooooo!

[barryman_5000]

No, its Dell, Intel and Microsoft = DIM Thats dim as in not too bright.

Re:Nooooooooo!

[jellomizer]

Yea Yea they are all evil. But guess what if you make a device you will need to get support from at least a couple major OS Makers, PC Manufacturers, and Motherboard makers. Those 3 are the major ones that if they like it everyone else will follow.

USB?

[AtariAmarok]

With so much stuff being plugged in via USB that used to go into PCMCIA card slots, is another card slot technology like this really needed?

Re:USB?

[barryman_5000]

I agree, USB can do everything and my 1gb memory stick will suffice thank you. My laptop has a pcmcia slot and I never used it. If I find out it doesn't work it wouldn't hurt me. This is an effort to be a big media hype making laptop users think they need some "new innovative technology". Let me hook up my USB printer, and my USB mouse. Is there something that I can't do with USB!?!?!

Re:USB?

[jellomizer]

Yes just because carrying a lot of additional USB equipment and cables get bothersome. The problem with PCMCIA cards is the fact that laptops are getting thinner and thiner and a laptop that has enough space to hold 2 PCMCIA cards are considered bulky monsters. Besides these cards are used for high bandwidth stuff. But the point of all cards is for them to be outdated and get embedded in the motherboard at some point. remember the PCMCIA eathernet cards with those dongles that break every 5 minutes?

Re:USB?

[Garion911]

I was thinking the same thing..

Maybe part of it is that people dont want various devices hanging outside their notebook.. Something that slides in, keeps the case smooth, sleek, simple..

Maybe what they reallly need is an insertable USB standard.. Basicly a recessed USB port, with a standard slot.. Then you could have all these slide in USB devices, fully compat with any USB computer.. Any non-slotable device could use inserts that would just make the port be along the edge of the machine (or just use the normal ports?)

Re:USB?

[swb]

Insertable USB solves the form-factor problem, but what about the bandwidth problem?

Re:USB?

[gl4ss]

well, at the very least you would need a standard dongle size for usb.

you know, unless you want sticks sticking out of your laptop.

Re:USB?

[VertigoAce]

Bulky monsters? It doesn't take much thickness to have two PCMCIA slots. Looking at my laptop (IBM T40), the total thickness of the two slots is still thinner than the space required for an ethernet jack. The only laptops that I've seen that are noticeably thinner are ones that don't have optical disc drives or ethernet ports (use wireless or some sort of external connector).

Re:USB?

[Xenna]

I've been walking around with that idea for a while. Great for those wifi, BT and mouse dongles. And all the industry needs to do is think of a standard form factor.

That bandwidth problem will be solved with USB 3.0 and 4.0...

X.

Re:USB?

[AtariAmarok]

"I've been walking around with that idea for a while. Great for those wifi, BT and mouse dongles. And all the industry needs to do is think of a standard form factor."

That is not a bad idea anyway. It would take some bulk out of those needlessly blobby thumb-drives.

Re:USB?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe what they reallly need is an insertable USB standard.

It looks like ExpressCard includes the USB electrical layer. ;-)

well...

[JawzX]

Sounds like PC card only smaller. Killer app aside, this could alow smaller laptops/palmtops to accept the kind of expansion devices we've come to expect from PC cards. I mean sure, many devices are comming through with built-in firewire/usb/networking, but this could reduce initial cost as well as size, or imagine a laptop with 4 expansion slots... It's all good. I'm excited to see what comes of it.

Now if only someone could build an AGP device thats PC card size or smaller... get me a radeon x800 for my (imaginary) Powerbook G5.

Re:well...

[Majorachre]

That's not totally a ridiculous idea. The ExpressCard is based on PCI-Express x1 - so the bandwidth is pretty sweet. It's not going to reach full 8x AGP but it will blow the socks off of a PCI video card. We're talking PCI (132MB/s) versus PCIe (~310MB/s).

Re:well...

[SydShamino]

>> Now if only someone could build an AGP device thats PC card size or smaller... get me a radeon x800 for my (imaginary) Powerbook G5.

AGP is completely obsolete, even at ~2.1 GB/s at 8x. PCI Express is ~310 MB/s _per lane_. With a PCIe x16, PCI Express hits 4 GB/s, easily beating AGP's best rate.

So, yes, PCIe x1 is effectively replacing PCMCIA in the ExpressCard format. But don't ask for someone to invent anything new for AGP - instead ask for a x16 ExpressCard format large enough for video card manufacturers.

(I doubt they'd bother due to the cost vs return, but at least you'd be asking the correct question.)

Re:well...

[Taladar]

The correct question would be one for a cooling system for that card. Transfer speed is irrelevant if the card melts during the boot process.

This great...

[Spy Handler]

I like USB 2 external devices over internal PCI cards, like my 802.11g thumbdrive. The only drawback is that USB thumbdrives stick out in an ungainly manner so they suck for long-term deployment.

This new thing sounds like it will work like USB2 except it will reside in a small chassis like PCMCIA. Just what I need.

ExpressCards picture

[Anonymous Coward]

Picture here.

Re:ExpressCards picture

[Anonymous Coward]

and here.

Re:ExpressCards picture

[LurkerXXX]

Too bad they don't have those next to PCMCIA cards to show relative size.

Re:ExpressCards picture

[RiBread]

See the ungainly looking card in that picture? The wide part is just as wide as a PCMCIA card.

Linux drivers?

[Quixote]

Going by the lack of Linux support for other such technologies (mini-PCI wifi on laptops), I have to wonder: is Intel going to release OSS drivers for these cards? Or are Linux users doomed to play catchup, forced to use Windows DLLs (like LinuxAnt) to get the hardware working?

Seeing that Intel is involved, I'm not too sure if they'll release the drivers anytime soon. But I guess we can wait and see.

--
Clicking on this link [yahoo.com] will cost Ken Lay of Enron $0.10. Don't believe me? Try it out. :-)

Re:Linux drivers?

[Anonymous Coward]

No problemo on this Transmeta(ya can't win 'em all) powered notebook.

lspci 00:12.0 Network controller: Intersil Corporation Prism 2.5 Wavelan chipset (rev 01)
works just fine. AFAIK the Broadcom miniPCI works FB too.

FY'allI, look for broken wireless AP in bargin bin at fleamarket. Some have mini-PCI card inside!

Re:Linux drivers?

[bersl2]

Going by the lack of Linux support for other such technologies (mini-PCI wifi on laptops)

Huh? What are you talking about? If a driver supports the Cardbus version, it supports the mini-PCI version.

Re:Linux drivers?

[The Salamander]

Intel has drivers for their http://ipw2100.sf.net and http://ipw2200.sf.net mini-PCI wifi cards...

Re:Linux drivers?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is Mini-PCI, NOT EXPRESSCARD! Not only that, it is not even the driver for the bus controller itself.

Re:Linux drivers?

[Trelane]

Going by the lack of Linux support for other such technologies (mini-PCI wifi on laptops), I have to wonder: is Intel going to release OSS drivers for these cards?

The sticking point isn't the mini-pci; Linux deals with that just fine. The sticking point is the chipset on the card itself, and how well the vendor does (or does not) support Linux or driver development for it.

To help remedy the situation, only buy cards that support Linux, or which let Linux support them. For additional mileage, send physical letters to the vendors you'd like to have support Linux.

Seeing that Intel is involved, I'm not too sure if they'll release the drivers anytime soon. But I guess we can wait and see.

Pardon me if I'm wrong, but I recall the drivers for the successors/alternatives to the ipw2100 chips (ipw2200 and some other, lesser-known one) being released fairly quickly after the chips' release. I have to say that I very much respect Intel, they actually did follow through with the ipw2100 driver (and successors), and they appear to be supporting Linux on other things (ACPI, for instance (THANKS, LEN!), and the Intel video chips they apparently provided specs for, if not wrote drivers for which got accepted into Linus' kernel). It definitely makes me more willing to buy and recommend Intel chips in the future.

Questions.

[FreeLinux]

Does it draw less power?
Does it generate less heat?
Will open source drivers be made available?
Should anyone care?

Re:Questions.

[Ageless]

The millions of business and game users for whom the technology is targetted at will care.

The three guys with Linux laptops might not.

Re:Questions.

[YetAnotherDave]

As someone who uses a linux laptop at work, I care.

I think the other two probably do too...

Re:Questions.

[minus9]

My laptop is linux only too, so I guess I have to thank either you or the other guy for writing all the drivers that make it work flawlessly.

Re:Questions.

[fnj]

I'm the third guy with a linux laptop, and I didn't write them, so I guess there must be more guys :-)

Re:Questions.

[kdekorte]

Well I'm #4 so I guess there are a few more. I know of at least a dozen people at work that have Linux only laptops as well.

Re:Questions.

[LilMikey]

Damn... I'm 5. I think I can feel the continuum tearing.

Re:Questions.

[Taladar]

Mine too (and no, I didn't write any linux drivers (yet)).

The way I see it you have a laptop either because you are high enough in the company to get them to buy one even though you don't need one or you have some mobile work to do on it which can be done on linux just as good as (or better than) on windows. As I student who uses a laptop for 2+ years now I have yet to find something that is more work in linux than in windows, especially with the relative to a desktop slow mouse (without an external one) linux has many advantages since there are much more keyboard-oriented programs.

Re:Questions.

[Trelane]

Hey, then I'm number 6, th#@^$QA@#QRH&*.

---

HTTP Error: 3920
The Matri^H^H^H^HUniverse is repairing itself.
Please stand by while we correct the issues.
Please stand by while we correct the issues.

---

HTTP Error: 3921
User [Trelane] not found.

This page is unreachable. Agents will arrive momentarily to take you to a re-education center. Please do not resist; it is much easier for you that way.

Is this needed?

[macbrak]

This just seems really useless to me.

While cards are nice and compact, USB/Firewire are fast enough now to be able to do anything that pc. Granted they're good for adding things like wireless to old computers but I don't think the cardbus will be the bottleneck for sometime, so why get rid of the old standard.

Why don't they just try to make USB 3.0 the end all be all of interfaces and have 1 type of port.

Maybe this is more of a pc problem. I just finally used my card slot on my powerbook (for wireless) last month, and if I bought any new mac this would be unnecessary.

Re:Is this needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. I mean taking a look at PC hardware, its one bolt on after another, add this slot, modify that card type. Everything is still so proprietary, every company thinks they can do the same job better.

Re:Is this needed?

[kulpinator]

Why don't they just try to make USB 3.0 the end all be all of interfaces and have 1 type of port.

This would be nice (I dreamt up a spec draft for something like this a few years ago), but if such a thing were to exist, it wouldn't be USB at all. USB is a polled bus and is therefore very inefficient for many tasks. The ExpressCard would come much closer to being (if it is not outright) an interrupt-driven system bus, something USB will never be. Besides, you still want to have the whole (laptop-)body-cavity thing going so you can leave peripherals plugged in without breaking off your connectors every time you stow your bag. But then you get an internal and an external connection again, no?

I don't see everything merging into one very soon, at least not until everything goes optical fiber and connections can be made very simple yet very fast.

Aww, man!

[200_success]

But we only recently got stable Cardbus support in Linux!

Seriously, using Linux has been good for my wallet. Not only do I save on software costs, I also reduce my spending on hardware because a lot of the more exotic gadgets aren't well supported.

I hope they use dongles!

[potus98]

Oooooh ooooh! I hope the figure out a way to use easy-to-break and impossible-to-find vendor-proprietary dongles for all my connections! That would be awesome!

Re:I hope they use dongles!

[dasunt]

I don't see why they couldn't have the new standard be twice the height of the current PCMCIA cards, but only half the width.

That's large enough for one of the following, flush with the end of the card:

• RJ-45 jack
• RJ-11 jack
• 2 USB ports
• Firewire port
• 3 mini-audio jacks

Under this scheme, dongles wouldn't be needed for the most common cards. There would be no protruding connection so that the laptop would fit without any problems in its carrying case. 2 slot machines could be arranged side to side, allowing "double-width" cards to be used for more room.

Re:I hope they use dongles!

[Wesley Felter]

PCMCIA Type III cards were double-high, but many modern laptops are too thin to support them.

Compatibility?

[SpongeBobLinuxPants]

Because we all know that VisaCards are accepted more places than ExpressCards.

Re:Compatibility?

[Dark Phantasmo]

Would have been funny if you said "VesaCards are accepted more places than ExpressCards" ...

Re:Compatibility?

[Rude Turnip]

It would be even *funnier* if it was spelled VESACards (notice the all caps on VESA) :)

Where is the Juice

[COMON$]

So now we just cut our battery life down to 10 minutes, but who cares as long as I can frag the weak in those 10 minutes...

But honestly is this extra power really going to make things better? Is it necessary?

10 years?

[dim5]

"Designed to be the standard add-on cards for the next 10 years..." That's a relief... my zip disk drive is on its last leg! :-p Is 10 years a realistic time frame for "new standards" anymore?

Re:10 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, PCMCIA has been around (and actually used) for at least that long, so, yeah, I'd say it's a reasonable goal.

"slowly phased out"

[nurb432]

See, this is how they get you to buy new hardware, with the DRM stuff built in.. ( and then later new softare as there wont be drivers for the latest new fangled devices for older OS's )

And you people roll over and accept it.

Upside For Users

[Inhibit]

I don't see terribly much upside for users on this one. It looks to be a cost saving effort by the manufacturers. Not that TFA had any technical content.

On the upside it might be slightly smaller to carry around and laptops are pretty special purpose devices. I doubt it will be much of an inconvenience to purchase new modules in this form, as most of the computers come with everything you might've had an old PCMCIA card for anyway.

Another thought. Why not simply use Compact Flash type 2? Allthough there isn't really enough info in the article to compare them..

Re:Upside For Users

[Dr. Manhattan]

Another thought. Why not simply use Compact Flash type 2? Allthough there isn't really enough info in the article to compare them..

That's PCMCIA technology, not even Cardbus. Too slow for what they are targeting. They want a videocard on one of these, and CF is limited to, max, about 12MB/sec. And CF has to tolerate much slower speeds, like on a 33MHz PDA.

No PCMCIA is not dead.

[will_die]

PCMCIA is the name of the group name the standard.
The current PC Cards is a standard from the PCMCIA group. ExpressCard is the new standard from the PCMCIA special interest group.

So PCMCIA is not going away.
I could make some comments about people not understanding computers, but will not.

Re:No PCMCIA is not dead.

[freeze128]

They are probably just trying to differentiate between the different standards of cards. Like PCMCIA Cards (16-bit), Cardbus (32-bit), and ExpressCard.

Re:No PCMCIA is not dead.

[simcop2387]

just remember, people can't memorize computer industry acronymas

Worth it?

[cheezemonkhai]

Old PC's that need additions have PCMCIA.

New Laptops have everything you could ever want on the mobo.

Na I think this one should die horribly.

Re:Worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true.

My prime counter-example right now is digital camera memory cards - SD cards, CF, etc. My laptop doesn't have slots for that. It does have slots for USB and Firewire, but I want the slots to be built in, not dangling off the side of my computer. With a PCMCIA slot, I can have card slots "built in", which is very convenient. With the adapter plugged in to the laptop, the resulting laptop is no larger than the laptop without the adapter.

I like the idea of being able to have laptop accessories that become part of the laptop unit itself. USB is beautiful, but it's a bit of a pain to have that stuff dangling off the port, and have to pack it up into the laptop bag and everything. The dangling-issue isn't a huge problem but it's an inconvenience - the availability of another option is nice.

Now PC's Can Catch up with Portable Game Systems

[Mr. Ghost]

After reading this article it seemed obvious that something like this would eventually occur (hindsite 20/20). Afterall the GameBoy Advance and GameBoy DS have had small card type form factors for their games for years (wrt GameBoy Advance).

I worked with PC cards way back in the early 90's using DAQ cards from various companies like Analog Devices (similar to these). I wonder if these Express cards will have the proper form factor to allow for construction of DAQ cards with multichannel inputs on the outside when inserted into the reader/drive. If they cannot do this then the PC card will probably always have a nitch that it can fit into.

expresscard.org

[quinkin]

If they gave a link somewhere useful you may know:

"All ExpressCard slots will accommodate modules designed to use either Universal Serial Bus (USB*) 2.0, or the emerging PCI*Express standards."

Q.

Re:expresscard.org

[quinkin]

link
I swear I meant to preview...
Q.

Re:expresscard.org

[LWATCDR]

Using USB 2.0 or firewire seems like the way to go for most things you stick on a notebook using a pcmcia card. The the common uses I can think of are.
Memory cards
Modems
network adapters
WiFi
and the data aqusistion cards.
Okay add in TV tuners maybe.
USB 2.0 and Firewife can handle all these with no problem. An internal slot with a firewire or usb 2.0 connection would work just fine.

Linux driver development

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel, Dell, etc. better make sure that the new standard comes with good driver support if they want it to be adopted by the user. This has been a problem in the past but now it is in their own interest. Is AMD supporting that standard yet?

Comparison Images

[Ahotasu]

The article is kinda skimpy on details for those of us who are visual-type people, so here is a link to an image comparing a PCMCIA card to the two ExpressCard forms.

Enjoy!

Re:Comparison Images

[Fred_A]

Wow, 1cm shorter that an PCMCIA card, how exciting...

yawn

re: comparison images

[eclectist]

Thanks for the image; now I can say to other geeks "It looks like a long CF card"

Photos and more info

[waynegoode]

For photos and more info see PCMCIA's official site for ExpressCard.

Re:Photos and more info

[Anonymous Coward]

Stellar... now instead of breaking off an Ethernet dongle, this format lets you break off THE WHOLE CARD -- check out the first photo. The first 22mm of the card are inserted into the computer, and the rest of it is sticking out to get mangled. Sorry, but that's never going to fly unless someone just leaves their notebook on their desk 24/7.

Re:USB is the thing.

[solafide]

Use USB ports and have mini-cords from 1" to 5" that come with the computer or an expansion pack and have about 15 USB ports. And have the plugs spinnable compared to the device so it can point at you when the port is upsidedown.

MOD PARENT UP

[Raspberry]

For people who don't read the article...

This isn't PCMCIA!

[technos]

This isn't PCMCIA-like at all. This is not a new bus. This is just a new standardization for how to connect to the existing PCI-E/USB busses, and a standard on card size! Think of it like hot-swap PCI for laptops.

Say you make a ExpressCard 56K modem. It will appear to the system as a USB device. All the card is doing is using the four pins of the slot that connect to the USB controller. The manufacturer will probably reuse 99% of the code from the USB version.

Say you make a ExpressCard video adaptor. Well, here it uses the couple dozen pins in the slot that connect more or less directly to the PCI-E bus. The manufacturer will probably reuse 95% of the code from the PCI-E version of the adaptor.

Beyond support for hot swap, the Linux kernel folks will have to make few changes.

Re:This isn't PCMCIA!

[dartboard]

Why can the manufacturer reuse 99% of the code for a modem and 95% for the video adapter? I was thinking more along the lines of 98% and 94%, respectively, but am willing to hear out your point of view.

Re:This isn't PCMCIA!

[technos]

Now now.. There will be no negotiation of my carefully researched figures! They are 99.42% accurate, and no other figures, studies, or estimations are correct!

None!

Do you hear me?!

Sorry, didn't mean to channel Gartner there.

Re:This isn't PCMCIA!

[obi]

Well, cardbus was exactly like hot-swap pci for laptops too, so the only real difference is the addition of a USB bus.

And yes, the drivers of a cardbus card and a compact-pci or pci card are almost identical.

WIndel

[GtKincaid]

Down the road, ExpressCard backers including Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , Intel Corp. (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Dell Inc. (DELL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , envision the technology moving to desktop PCs, eliminating the need to pop open computer cases to install hardware upgrades.

Why is it when i hear M$ , Intel and Dell getting together behind something that I get the funny feeling that i need to go find my tinfoil hat

Re:PCI Express -- the new AGP?

[beyond_the_blue]

Unfortunately, reports indicate that Express Cards cannot be used to replace video cards, whether due to heat, archtecture limitations or power consumption, I'm not sure.

It certainly would be nice to be able to upgrade laptop video, even if all you could get would be the Mobile and Go series of GPUs. It would easily increase the life of a laptop gaming system by a few years.

Re:USB is the thing.

[solafide]

Use USB ports and have mini-cords from 1" to 5" that come with the computer or an expansion pack and have about 15 USB ports. And have the plugs spinnable compared to the device so it can point at you when the port is upsidedown. On size of laptops, they are too small if they don't have 2 or 3 slots. Mine is too wide and long, but the thickness- an inch is good enough if you are not wide or long. But the fickleness of the market - tooo bad they want that. Better make better fans.

Open Gates

[Doc Ruby]

All these different expansion slots are patched into different buses, sometimes with lots of crossover. With weight, power, CPU bandwidth and expense all at a premium, when will notebooks ship with a big FPGA at the core? The BIOS could configure it at boot to interconnect the actual connected devices, cached for reboot and reconfigured on device dis/reconnect. It would be as common as the DSP in integrated sound and video cards. Then we could code the FPGA/DSPs combo for our own devices, a tight little DSP fabric compute server that uses the rest of the PC as a multimedia/network/storage front end. Keep your 64bit Pentium, and experimental versions of XP, and give me Win2K running a parallel MAC gate array fabric!

Will this let me use my laptop as a monitor?

[swb]

I'd love to be able to use my laptop as a monitor for either analog or VGA-type video signals. Does anyone make a laptop that allows you to input video to the LCD display? I know there are analog input solutions via USB or Firewire, but nothing that lets me use the LCD display as a display independent of the CPU.

Re:Will this let me use my laptop as a monitor?

[Anonymous Coward]

What you are looking for is called Zoom-Video(ZV). It was added to PCMCIA before CardBus came around but unfortunately not all laptops supprt this standard.

I was about to tell you that they were all EXTREMELY overpriced($200+), and that pretty much all the Zoom-Video cards had been discontinued (a.k.a iRez's Capsure. However I froogled and found a Nogatech ConferenceCard that seems like it would do the trick for under $30! Anyhoo, I've never used the Nogatech card and they have gone out of business so definately make sure it will work for you.

Re:Will this let me use my laptop as a monitor?

[for_usenet]

A while ago, a company called iRez made a PCMCIA card (can't remember if it was Cardbus or not - and I would guess not) that would input video from the S-video or RCA port on the card, and use a feature of the slot called "zoomed video" that would let it transfer the video off the card to the screen with very low load. You would still need software to access the card and view the video, but a few years ago (when this card was available), viewing video with it (even at full screen) still left a very responsive system. I know of no more recent counterparts ...

Reading Slashdot for the articles

[AtariAmarok]

"Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles"

This analogy implies that the real reason you read Slashdot is for the pictures..... and here, that means a proliferation of linked goatse and tubgirl. Ugh!

yes i need more slots on my PC

[Anonymous Coward]

like i havent already got a stupid multi card reader that is living testament to media format wars iam not suprised floppy disk has lasted so long, i need more slots on the front of my pc so the industry can look even more stupid, can you imagine if every car manufacturer had its own method of filling its petrol tank , would we have a row of different sized fillercaps down the side of your car ?

this is how the customer loses when there are 20 differing standards of oblong cards and slots sizes

Yet Another Standard?

[RAMMS EIN]

Does this mean that there will be Yet Another Standard to support? It looks like USB already does everything that is needed. Couldn't they just make a slot with a USB connector at the end or something?

Re:Yet Another Standard?

[wild_berry]

Excuse me, but did you RTFA? I think it says this is a slot with a connector for either USB or PCIe stuff.

And above here (okay, this is Slashdot...), someone says that USB is a polled interface and that makes it not good for stuff that needs interrupts to get heard on the computer, so it needs to be more than just USB.

I hate being a naysayer but...

[umshaggy]

If the target for these things are HDTV tuners, external drives, etc. Where is the market? With USB2.0 and Firewire already built into every laptop made (and most desktops), and both designed for exactly this sort of application, and both already industry standards, what is the advantage to adding new and potentially expensive tech?

Floppy only "obsoleted" last year

[AtariAmarok]

"that is living testament to media format wars iam not suprised floppy disk has lasted so long"

The floppy was only "obsoleted" last year when thumb-drive prices went way down. Only then were floppies not the best way anymore to move small files very quickly between non-connected machines.

"would we have a row of different sized fillercaps down the side of your car ?"

I wondered what was behind those portholes on the sides of Buicks!

Re:Floppy only "obsoleted" last year

[Anonymous Coward]

So what do you get when you buy a separate SCSI card or IDE RAID card for your machine to install drivers on? Either

a) Floppy
b) CD-Rom

a) aint no good no more because Floppies are deprecated
b) aint no good because the CDRom drive is connected to the new card.

Dagnabit!

The only answer is a USB device with the drivers on it.

Re:Floppy only "obsoleted" last year

[LilMikey]

Point well taken but I bet I can burn a CD with a 1.44mb file on it, take it to the other computer and copy it off in the time it takes one of those 3.5" POS to write the damn file. Not to mention the shelf life of what, 14 days? 'Bah!' I say. I've been floppyless and proud of it for years.

whither killer app?

[spoonyfork]

In the 1990s, before modems and ethernet network adapters were integrated inside of laptops, corporate users purchased PC cards in droves for those applications. This time around, non-business applications, like add-on memory cards and TV tuners, are expected to lead the way.

I bought (and saw get bought) a lot of modem and ethernet PC cards in the 90s. Some more were purchased in early 00s to support wireless networks. Modems and NICs were a definite killer app.

However I, like others, already have an investment in already available quick, high volume, portable USB and firewire memory devices (e.g. iPod, flashdrive). The TV tuner baffles me. Is this for home? What if you already have a nice large TV, why would I want to hook up my laptop when my TV is going to be so much better? I suppose there are those that might but enough to be a killer app? I think not. Faith that already covered markets will be the future killer app of ExpressCards is folly. Try again folks.

Re:whither killer app?

[Fred_A]

I have to admit that if there's one thing that I absolutely don't want on my laptop, it's TV, HD or not.

There's enough crap available on the Web and Usenet without adding TV to the mix.

Yuck.

But will it be a PCI killer?

[strredwolf]

Wait... we have a 10 Mhz 16-bit PC Card Services bus, a faster, 32 bit CardBus, and what's this now?

Let's pull the white paper.

First, it's 1 PCI Express lane (2.5 Gigabit) plus USB 2.0 (480+ Mbit) in about 20 pins. USB already is installed on laptops -- this is just another form factor for it. I'll ignore it and concentrate on PCI Express.

Now what are we using that requires that much bandwidth? All together now: Uncompressed video and Gigabit Ethernet.

I think we'll have alot of high-end laptops in 2005 have this, the ones who need to muck with video on the go.

A side note: Currently mainstream PCI is a 32-bit bus at 33 Mhz (Although we can double the size and the speed, it's allowed in the spec). That's about 132 Megabytes per sec, or 1.056 Gigabit. Five channel, 48Hz 16-bit audio is about 480 Kbyte/s. 1 Gigabit Ethernet would flood a PCI bus -- but current speeds comming out of Cable, DSL, and Fiber To the House are sub-10baseT speeds.

Re:But will it be a PCI killer?

[teg]

Now what are we using that requires that much bandwidth? All together now: Uncompressed video and Gigabit Ethernet.

Networking on laptops are no longer done with PCMCIA... first ethernet, and now wireless, are usually delivered built in. Many laptops come with GbE too.

As for GbE filling the bus... chipsets often handle these outside the PCI bus. And servers use PCI-X (or now, PCI Express).

Re:But will it be a PCI killer?

[Anonymous Coward]

The advantage that I see is that I can finally have the convenience (and savings) of having ExpressCard on the desktop. I think VIA did a very cool thing by adding a PCCard slot to it's M2 boards. We should eliminate PCI altogether and go with these. Imagine a desktop with 6 of these slots instead of ATX+5PCI! So much smaller and faster to boot. Damn, I want one!

I hope they don't have dongles! Or leave enough space between the slots on desktops to accomodate things like RJ45 and such.

Ugly

[erroneus]

Okay it's a little smaller than PCMCIA and probably a lot faster or whatever. Natural evolution? Yeah, I guess so.

But I looked at a web site showing a PC/Workstation with a card slot in front and apparantly there are two sizes of slots... the smaller cards are still compatible with the larger slot but it doesn't look nice at all... not to me anyway. I'm getting there would be an easy way to make it look more slick but the picture didn't appeal to me.

Changing formats always has a pain component. Moving away from floppies wasn't all that painful but it has been very long and drawn out and even now, I am still using them for small things like ghost boots and stuff like that. I hope it's worthwhile but I can't help but wonder why they didn't make it somehow work in the PCMCIA format? They could call it PCMCIA2 or something. I guess there are reasons that I'll never hear for all of that.

Linux support is an assumption I make right now... I assume it will happen rapidly. People choked when USB started to catch on and I've never had problems with PCMCIA with Linux but then again, it was only within the past two years that I started using Linux on a laptop anyway. But with some of the players out there now (Intel) I think Linux support will be a given. Intel would be stupid to let Microsoft influence them against Linux at this point since Microsoft isn't supporting their 64bit processors particularly well.

Re:Ugly

[dbacher]

PCMCIA and Cardbus have always had a "large" card for devices such as hard drives, and a "small" card for devices such as networks and SCSI adapters, etc.

Some manufactuers gave large slots, some gave small slots, and some gave a combination. It was common to have two cardbus slots one above the other, with the cover designed so that you could put a full size card in and block both slots, or put in the smaller card.

Keep in mind, this is for laptops and is for devices that need performance -- for example, when you need gigabit ethernet and it wasn't created when the laptop was built -- and so it's harder to make it "look nice." Every laptop has different colors and different layout, etc. and it's much harder to make something that looks right in all of them.

Not New at All...

[loyukfai]

Besides the confusion you see here, one may note that ExpressCard, besides the name, is not new at all. It was originaly named "NEWCARD" and announced 2 years ago.

FYI, you can find more about its history here, here, and here.

Agreed

[Shazow]

I agree. We need more USB slots and maybe one or two Firewire slots. I've never used the PCMCIA slot on my laptop, and unfortunately it only came with 2 USB slots, which I use both of almost always (swapping is quite a hassle). I wish they'd forget about the PCMCIA slot and maybe added 2-3 more USB ports.

Of course, those who have their wireless card connect via PCMCIA might not agree, but I've integrated wireless.

- shazow

Re:Agreed

[magarity]

2 USB slots, which I use both of almost always (swapping is quite a hassle)

Rejoice, for I bring good tidings; There is a device called a 'USB Hub' that allows branching off of a single port. Since you're already dragging around multiple USB devices that you need to swap back and forth, another one won't be that big of a deal especially given the tiny sizes some of the hubs come in. Oh, and the PCMCIA slot you wish was replaced by '1 or 2' extra USB ports? You can get 2 or even 4 port USB PCCards if you don't want an external hub off the laptop's built in port. Check eBay; prices for those are under $20 including shipping.

I got one so my slightly older laptop could take advantage of USB 2.0. There's a good reason for having some kind of generic port on the side of the laptop. It was a LOT cheaper to get a card than a new laptop to use my USB 2.0 CD-RW drive. A year or so after these new slots are installed in laptops with FW800 and USB 2.0, there's going to be FW1600 and USB 3.0. For those who can't afford a whole new machine it sure is nice to just get a little card to take advantage of whatever new tech comes along.

Re:Agreed

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Several problems. Not everyone is you... I use PCMCIA for gps, for a smartcard reader I play with, and for a few weird network cards when I'm playing around (token ring and arcnet... can't find the localtalk one). I'd even like to find a PCMCIA tv tuner someday...

And USB isn't a replacement. For one, it demands 500mA of power, per USB. Most laptops can't promise that, beyond 1-2, or at most, 3 usb ports. And then there is the entire bandwidth thing... USB was truly meant to be for pointers and keyboards, and other low bandwidth stuff. The protocol shows this, anytime you have 2 greedy devices wanting all the bandwidth. Even USB2 suffers from this.

And you'll rethink that integrated wireless, when one day it just stops working because a bad antenna/hinge design (and they're all bad, every single one) chews the antenna in half. And it will likely be 3 hours after the warranty is up.

HDTV is a bad example..

[tji]

Viewing HDTV is kind of a bad example for this. HDTV is received as a 20Mbps MPEG2 stream. This can easily be passed through a cardbus slot, and probably through an old standard PCMCIA slot.

The only time it becomes bandwidth intensive is after the MPEG2 is decoded on the CPU, you need good AGP bus bandwidth to send the 1920x1080i video to the display.

WiFi

[Dalroth]

How about somebody make a freaking WiFi PCMCIA card that DOES NOT STICK OUT THE SIDE OF MY LAPTOP??

THAT would be nice...

Bryan

Re:WiFi

[greywire]

Its called an antenna. You want your WiFi to work, dont you?

One thing you could do is get a better card that has a detatchable antenna (I have a high power SMC card that does this). Then get a connector cable and a small antenna you can stick on the back of your laptop (they have flat antennas). the cable will only stick out a little (like 1/8"), much better!

Re:WiFi

[Aryeh Goretsky]

Hello,

3Com makes the unimpressively-named 3CRPAG175, a CardBus card with an XJack-style retractable antenna.

I use one in my IBM ThinkPad T23 and it works quite well--no problems with the antenna getting stuck or failing to retract.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Re:WiFi

[mebob]

unfortanitly, you kind of need the antenna. Laptops that contain internal cards have an antenna that usually runs around the display just under the plasitics. Apples laptops for example, used to just have what was pretty much just a PCCARD card with antenna jack. It sat just below the standard card slot but staggered away from the edge of the case.

What would have been nice: including contact for the antenna at pin side of the cards, so the antenna could be optional. Or even just a card that sits flush but has a flexible wire antenna of some type.

Either way with all the memory and device interfaces lately I really don't think this is appropriate. Seems like it been physically reduced too far, though a standard interntal USB interfave would be nice.

Really?

[magicianuk]

I've just been looking at ordering a new PC and several of my suppliers now offer desktop and tower PCs without a floppy as standard, ditto laptops.

I've actually had to pick up a USB floppy drive "just in case" though usually if there's a USB port, I'll use the USB hard disk or memory stick instead.

Will this let me destroy the earth with my laptop?

[fireboy1919]

Of course not. Why would you think a new connector that is basically does a superset of cardbus and USB would be capable of what the two of them aren't? How do you think this would work? Would it magically worm it's way into the connection between your LCD and the motherboard to handle I/O?

Making extra hardware in the LCD to convert NTSC or PAL into something it can understand would mean adding a processor to the LCD itself, which means the screen would be thicker and more cumbersome. Further, you don't get any of the advantages you get with a full system, such as the ability to encode and record inputs, and the opportunity to put the inputs in a place where they're less likely to break. No one would do that; it's a bad design.

If that's very important to you, just buy an LCD with that capability (they make them, but not for laptops). It'll be a lot thicker and heavier than the equivalent VGA-signal only laptop display. Or go with the USB, Firewire, or PCMCIA "anolog input solutions."

Hot pluggable PCI

[gagol]

Take a look there, hot swap PCI exists, but it's not as cheap as "open your case". Maybe apple should consider for his server and pro line-up...

http://www.trioniq.com/

why they are doing this:

[greywire]

Yes, its faster. But I think the primary reason they are doing this is not because we all want or need that kind of speed, but because it simply allows them to build simpler machines. Since its just a form factor for PCI-Express+USB, that means less circuitry.

Its also great for marketing.

Yet Another Non-Free Standard

[FrankDrebin]

The PCMCIA folks, who are behind this ExpressCard thing, want $349 USD for a copy of the standard, and it is only available in electronic form.

I can understand a small printing fee for a dead-tree copy. But sheesh, when will these guys follow the lead of the IEEE on the 802. standards and just open them up?

Re:PCI Express -- the new AGP?

[my_breath_smells]

No, the bandwidth (2.5 Gbps in each direction) of the 1x PCI Express Lane in an ExpressCard can't compete with an AGP8X built in solution (2.1 GB/sec). The ExpressCard power limitations would keep it from working as well, but primarily its bandwidth.

However, the beauty of PCI Express (and ExpressCard) is that your entire machine will be using the same buses for all communication (from the Northbridge on...). None of this AGP for the GPU, PCI for the other devices and an adapter chip to provide CardBus/16-Bit PC Card support that adds complexity and cost to every motherboard. Each device will speak PCI Express and/or USB. All you need is a good Northbridge and the appropriate connectors.

Two ExpressCard/32 cards will fit in the space currently used by a PC Card slot. And the fact that the PCIExpress/USB connection simply taps into the existing buses means that your ExpressCard connectors don't have to be co-located. (Right now your CardBus/PC Card slot MUST be as close as possible to the (typically TI) Cardbus Host Adapter.)

Similarly it should be trivial to add an ExpressCard connector to a desktop (as all new desktops have PCIExpress and USB) and your ExpressCard modules can be reused.

Software isn't an issue because PCI Express is simply a Physical Layer change. All existing PCI code will work with PCI Express out of the box.

There's a fly in the ointment though. Along with ExpressCard, there's also PCI Express Mini Card. PCI Express Mini Card (51mm x 30mm) is very similar in physical size to ExpressCard (75mm x 34mm), but though they both have USB and PCIExpress connections, the connectors are completely different. ExpressCard is a mere 26 pins, but PCI Express Mini Card is 52 (and a PCI Express 1x is 36).

ExpressCard and PCI Express Mini Card aren't competitors, though. PCI Express Mini Cards are for internal connections while your ExpressCard is physically encased and protected. As a hardware designer, though, I wish the two standards shared a bit more commonality. If, at least, the PCB sizes could be exactly the same, we would probably see most ExpressCard products come out as PCI Express Mini Cards (and visa versa). I don't know if that will happen as the circuit board would have to be completely redesigned (for space-constrained designs).

Oh, and one more thing...
PCI Express, even in its 32 Lane (8 GB/sec unencoded) form, has too much latency for direct memory access. Hypertransport does not suffer from this same deficiency.

Thanks to coders, not Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

Both pages start saying they have no HW documentation. "Thanks" Intel for the "support". :P

Um, but why?

[gillbates]

The cards will generally add little to existing PC cards, Saunders said, but that's necessary to help ease the transition from CardBus, the current slot technology. The two are not compatible.[emphasis mine]

So, I'm expected to just upgrade for the joy of hardware troubleshooting?! Problem is, there is no compelling reason to break backward compatibility in this case - no new features, and the speed of existing cards generally isn't an issue.

That compatibility is expected to give ExpressCard a boost over prior PC cards in ease of installation and configuration with the Windows operating system...

Yeah, right. First of all, I'm no Windows fan, but it seems to me that PCMCIA was one of the few things that Windows did get right. If you had drivers for the device, Windows loaded them without hassle whenever you inserted the card. How much easier could it get?

Heck, even Linux works well with PCMCIA devices - to be honest, I don't even know which drivers my PCMCIA ethernet card uses because I've never had to figure it out. I just plug the card in, and it works.

Looks to me like a real flop. If you're going to break backward compatibility, you have to offer your customers a compelling reason to buy your product, i.e. better performance, new features, etc... I did RTFA, and it seems like the new Express architecture is little more than an excuse to keep engineers and programmers employed.

Re:Um, but why?

[oe1kenobi]

Because it is simpler.

As new chipsets will be based on PCI-Express (PCIe), support for ExpressCards will be built-in (since ExpressCards are just an interface to PCIe + USB 2.0).

If the manufacturer doesn't need to add support for the ISA+PCI busses (as that is what PCMCIA 16-bit and CardBus 32-bit cards use), they can save that much production cost, energy use, etc.

ExpressCard will be supported for the same reasons as the underlying PCIe bus.

Now, whether the laptop you next buy supports ExpressCards, PC Cards, or both is somewhat up to you (and what all other buyers want). Just as there are PC motherboards that have both PCI and PCIe slots, I expect there will be laptops with both PC Card and ExpressCard slots, at least for a while.

Note that the same simplification is happening with USB vs. RS232 and Parallel ports.

Re:Will this let me destroy the earth with my lapt

[swb]

Alright, simmer down.

I didn't think that this inteface really had anything to do with this.

But it gave me the chance to ask on a low-traffic /. article related to laptops about my favorite missing feature, the ability to use the laptop display as a monitor. And while we're at it, why not the ability to use a laptop's hardware as an entire KVM?

Where I think it would be truly useful is in a rack situation where a generic PC would be handy and where you'd waste space with a traditional KVM solution. Racking another PC would be a waste of space/money, and the laptop itself would eliminate the need for KVM.

More killing power eh ?

[farzadb82]

I'll do it! -- Homer Simpson

That's the future of computers

[zoffdino]

This small, ultra-high speed gizmo just telling me that computers of future whould be even much more portable than those of current generation.

In the future, we will have small cards with 200GB of storage that act like our current HDD. These cards can be easily plugged into any "bare-bone terminal" with monitor, mouse, keyboard and speaker ready and run right out of the bag. The OS is pre-installed on the card as well. Another card will be sloted into your iPod. Everytime you want to sync your iPod with your comp, push the card out and plug into it the right slot, it cannot be simpler! USB, FireWire, PS/2 and other external ports will be replaced by this single standard.

If you want to build a dream machine of your own, just buy some of those cards (gfx, sound, RAM, external BD/HD-DVD writer...) and slot them into a much smaller box than today's CPU case. No screw will ever need to be turned. In short, the computer of tomorrow will be extrememely portable.

It may sound like "I, Robot" or "The Minority Report" now but that's how computers will go for the future

Not me.

[AtariAmarok]

"Point well taken but I bet I can burn a CD with a 1.44mb file on it, take it to the other computer and copy it off in the time it takes one of those 3.5" POS to write the damn file"

Not me. However, I'm using that kludgey Roxio for PC package. You have to wait about a 30 seconds it to format the entire CD, then you copy the file, and you have wait likely more than 30 seconds for it to make the CD so another machine can read it. The floppy-copy would have been done by the time the first CD step was completed.

(Don't make the mistake of using the "Easy CD" package of theirs. The "Direct CD" is the easy one!).

I've done what you describe, however, in a situation that required repeated copies to test a file. I set the CD not to close the session each time. It often works less than 10 cycles before the CD fries (making it a little worse than a floppy for re-usability).

Let me point to you the best options I've found

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get TV-tuners as USB-dongles, I've seen it, but never tried it. Here's a Googled link: http://shopping.zdnet.co.uk/shopping/video-cards/t v-tuner-cards/0,20000296,20283447p,00.htm

Or you could go for the Asus W1000Na-series of notebooks: http://uk.asus.com/products/notebook/w1series/w100 0na/w1000na_overview.htm

It comes with built-in TV-tuner and remote-control, even sporting a small subwoofer. But according to the forum for W1000N Asus refuses to give out the standards, so it's proprietary and the software really sucks.

But aside from that the W1000N-series is really highly regarded by its owners, as you can read on the fan forum-site: http://www.w1n-forum.net/

It even sports 4.1 sound output, which is good enough if you're not a fanatic.

I'm waiting for Dolby Surround 6.1, and upgraded options on this baby. But if I really have to buy a laptop, I would buy it today. Just make sure you get the a-series for the TV-tuner. It might even be the better option if tomorrows laptops gets hotter and noisier as they get upgraded.

Readable version

[Anonymous Coward]

http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/11/1 455215