Practical uses for ExpressCard?

Question

My laptop has a 34mm ExpressCard slot. I always viewed it as an appendix, similar to the PCMCIA card slots of old, but as it turns out, people do make accessories for it. The most common I've seen is an expansion card with 2 USB slots in it, but I'm wondering - are there other, more interesting uses for the slot?

Solution

There are numerous other uses for an ExpressCard slot, including:

• Solid-state drives
• CAC (Common Access Card) readers
• External enclosures for the desktop-sized PCI Express graphics cards
• Ethernet network ports
• Wireless NICs (Network Interface Controllers)
• Mobile broadband modems (referred to as a Connect Card)

And many more. As @paradroid was saying, "It's basically an interface to the PCI-E bus, as laptops do not have PCI-Express slots like desktop computers have."

You can learn more about ExpressCards by going to the Wikipedia article.

Comments

[Naidim]

Has your laptop got USB 3.0, FireWire, analogue modem, eSATA? Do you need anything like that?

[Naidim]

It's basically an interface to the PCI-E bus, as laptops do not have PCI-Express slots like desktop computers have.

[whs]

You would get best use of it with an eSata card. Best speed and you can install and run an Operating System on an external device - e.g. a SSD. ==> newegg.com/Product/…-39-328-033--Product