Asus W3J - Express Slot or PCMCIA II ?

Does the Asus W3J Notebook come with a express slot or PCMCIA Type II?

According to this website, it has PCMCIA. (2nd paragraph from the bottom)
According to this website, it has Express. (4th paragraph from the top)

Is there maybe a difference between UK and USA model or is it just a mistake on the website?

 

its express

 

You're not going to find pcmcia on any more of Asus' notebooks as all the models that have been released since March have come with them.

 

Cheers thanx for that guys

 

Expect for this one!

 

The A6's are another story..... they're the only exception, but they're also the cheapest.

 

are there any neat Express peripherals yet?

 

Not many that I've seen..... but it's for "future upgrades"...... Right now all Asus notebooks have just about everything anyone could possibly need with the exception of a cell card..... and funny enough, knowing this, those cell cards should have been available last year, but don't start coming out until probably next month..... but fo rthe most part, that slot is for things that come out in the future as pcmcia will be discontinued. So, in 2-3 years, if there are things that are on those systems that you don't have...... that's when you'll need to use them....... Right now, the only other need I've even heard of is for some audiophiles that need a specific setup for certain recording programs.... but that's few and far between....

 

Some very interesting and helpful info regarding the Express Card...

 

I was noticing that ExpressCard seems to have two formfactors, a 34mm and a 54mm size. I was wondering if both of these are supported by the W3j. I would assume that 54mm is backwards compatible with 34mm devices, but I wanted to make sure. I've only seen the slot on this one referred to as 54, but on others I've seen them labelled as 34/54.

 

All Asus notebooks that use express card are using the standard 54mm...... 54mm is the same width as the old pcmcia slots (so the slot fit in well with the current designs).... but 54mm accepts both 54mm and 34mm.

 

Thanks, that's exactly what I figured, but since this is new technology that I've never dealt with, I wasn't sure.

 

ExpressCard stands for "PCI"-ExpressCard

This means, "theoretically" you can have EXTERNAL high-end video graphics cards via expresscard port connection

 

That may be true, but does anyone know the bandwidth of it? I'm sure it's not as fast as an x16 slot, probably like x1 or x4 or maybe x8. I don't think the designers of the standard were really thinking about it for that use, probably more for communications devises as have been popular in the past. I'm sure someone will come out with a video device because the bus is much faster than PCMCIA, but they probably won't offer performance to write home about.

 

Don't think it has quite the bandwidth to support a graphics card. I think somewhere there must be a bottleneck, otherwise there would be express card graphics cards. I know express card slots are several times faster than PCMCIA slots though.

 

That's what I figured and it also occurred to me that heat would be a definate problem. There is no easy/efficient way to cool a card in that slot.

 

the card itself wouldn't be the video card in the slot..the express-card connects to a larger external contained box with a more powerful video card inside it.

www.tomshardware.com is YO FRAND

 

I suppose that would work, but then you go right back to the lack of bandwidth. In any case, I can't ever see myself using one.

 

What is the CONIFRMEED bandwidth of the Express Card slot technology?