How long will PC Card/PCMCIA format be with us?
Al Dykes
When will the PCMCIA card slot become rare in new laptops?
What will replace it?
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Joel Kolstad
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> When will the PCMCIA card slot become rare in new laptops?
It already is kinda rare.
> What will replace it?
In case you haven't noticed, CardBus already replaced it -- it's just that
CardBus uses the same connector as PCMCIA and -- as far as I'm aware -- the
interface chipsets still support PCMCIA cards in a CardBus slot. Tricky.
What's replacing CardBus is ExpressCard, which is a difference connector and
shape than CardBus/PCMCIA. That's what comes in most new laptops today, and
probably within another year or two it'll be quite rare to get anything else.
Barry Watzman
already gone; in others, it may be around for a couple more years, maybe.
Quaoar
> When will the PCMCIA card slot become rare in new laptops?
>
> What will replace it?
>
>
>
The PC-card and the Express Card are dieing on the vine. PC-Cards were
an easy way to upgrade notebooks for LAN/Wireless/USB2/Firewire. Now,
all of these are supplied on the mainboards or mini-pci cards, for the
most part. USB2 seems to be taking up the slack for odds and ends like
wireless mouse transmitters, bluetooth transmitters. The PCMIA Express
Card slot is replacing (or has replaced) the PCMCIA PC-Card slot in
notebooks.
There are few owners of notebooks less than say four years old that have
need for their PC-Card/Express Card slots, except for cell phone
wireless, SATA interface, Firewire 800 interface; the bulk of notebook
owners are never going to get involved in any of these.
Have a look at http://www.newegg.com . Their current offerings of both
PC-Cards and Express Cards are almost non-existent compared to what they
offered a few years ago.
Q
Barry Watzman
Cardbus slots replaced non-Cardbus slots in about 1997.
A Cardbus card ***IS*** still a "PC Card".
PC Cards (previously known as PCMCIA cards) come in two flavors:
-16 bit cards, which are, architecturally, the equivalent of an old ISA card
-32 bit cards, which are, architecturally, the equivalent of a PCI card
"Cardbus" is just another name for 32-bit PC Cards
Virtually every laptop since about 1997 has taken both interchangeably.
But the replacement for "PC Card" slots is "Express Card" slots, which
are, architecturally, the equivalent of PCI Express cards.
They began appearing about 2 years ago on laptops, but sockets on
laptops are far more common than the cards themselves. As of today
(August 2007), new laptops are split: some have PC card slots, some have
Express Card slots, and some (not enough, but some) have both.
SMS
> When will the PCMCIA card slot become rare in new laptops?
>
> What will replace it?
I was looking for a laptop for my daughter today, and I need to have a
CardBus slot. There are still quite a few available from Fujitsu,
Lenovo, Dell, and Toshiba.
The problem is that it's expensive for the manufacturer. The CardBus
chips sit on the PCI bus, so they need to add a PCI Express to PCI
bridge as well as the CardBus chip.
Barry Watzman
SMS
from someone on craigslist for $730. It had XP Pro which I prefer over
Vista, and the full Microsoft Office suite. Hopefully since the
ownership transfer went through on the Dell web site this means that it
wasn't stolen.
The down side is that there is no 1394 built in, but a store near me
sells a CardBus 1394 card with cable for $12.50. The upside is that it
has built in IR, which is very rate these days. I like the magnesium
chassis versus plastic, and the 3 year warranty and the long battery
life. Fry's had some good deals on Fujitsu notebooks that had both
ExpressCard and Cardbus slots, but the warranty is only one year, and
it's very difficult to buy parts and get service for Fujitsu stuff.
The D630 which replaced the D620 has no IR but added Firewire.
Joel Kolstad
---Joel