Express Cards -- Worthless

So I have a new laptop coming and it has an Express Card slot. Too bad the Express card slot is worthless. I mean, look at these pathetic offerings: Express Cards.

Firewire, card reader, and ethernet ports? Sigh -- today's notebooks already come with firewire, card readers and CAT5 ports. Mobile broadband? Waste -- if people really need that, laptops today have mobile access as an included feature. TV tuners? Waste.

Why can't Express cards do something useful? Like boost battery life, or boost ram without draining battery power. Maybe even serve as a simple yet powerful security or access feature (for people who don't have biometric security).

Or how about a card that could help boost startup times by, say, allowing the operating system to load from an ExpressCard RAM drive instead of the hard drive -- if an Express Card could cut boot times from 40 seconds to 5 or 10, that's useful.

Something, anything, other than the junk on the market today.

 

I agree with both of you.
I have a laptop with PCMCIA and Expresscard.
I thought to myself "hey, that's cool, I have a Creative sound card for the PCMCIA slot and I'll get a TV tuner for the Expresscard slot".
Unfortunately, nothing fits in the Expresscard slot when there's something in the PCMCIA slot, and vice versa.
Plus the TV tuners available for Expresscard are ridiculously expensive and there's nothing else useful available.

 

It's new, give it time. And what's with this "do this without lowering battery time"? That's just stupid thinking.

 

I agree with DragonRage, thats ridiculously stupid, Its like saying "I want a keyboard that makes my Laptop boot faster and increases battery Life!!" the two components are completly unrelated. On a side note ExpressCard does increase battery life, It has a lower maximum wattage than the old Cardbus. I had no trouble finding a large range of notebooks featuring both and on my own Sony FE you can have a card in both the PCMCIA slot and in the Expresscard slot without any difficulty, If its innapropriatly placed then thats not the expresscard standards fault, its the company that designed the layout of your notebook. Also there are alot of Expresscards that ive seen that are not on that listing, just go to newegg and you will see a large range of stuff. Im sorry that expresscard didnt instantly make your notebook into the god that you seem to have expected it would, But its a great leap forward and when PCI Rev2 is finalised it will have enough bandwidth to effectivly support External GPU's, And even as it stands now I can run 2 SATAII 7200rpm drives on this at the same speed and performance i get on a desktop.

 

I wasn't saying it was the fault of the Expresscard standard that I couldn't have both in at the same time, just that it adds to my general agravation
To be honest I think it's Creative's fault, the ard is a little...bulbous...on top...

 

It is? I bet 20 years ago if someone suggested, "hey, it would be cool to be able to send emails wirelessly from a portable computer," you would have said, "stupid thinking." AmIrite? If you're statisfied with the current makeup, good for you. Have fun diddling around with TV tuners (laugh).

The point was, make a card that's truly useful. Prepare an Express card that's useful and moves the technology forward, increasing the power of the laptop. Something, anything, other than the junk that's out there today. Users don't need firewire, ethernet and card readers -- machines and docking stations already have these ports. Redundancy = worthless, and nothing you've said challenges this point.

I visited the online store, and I saw more of the same useless Express Card stuff.

You found a card that supports running two external hard drives. That's well and good, but an enormous majority of users won't ever need that. And if there is a consumer power user who needs a reasonably-sized storage solution, chances are he's not wasting time with external 7200 rpm drives and Express cards. He'll purchase something akin to the 10,000 rpm, 16 mb cache WD Raptors -- a storage solution that just annihilates (and I do mean destroys beyond comprehension) both the price and the performance of an ExpressCard-external HD setup, for much cheaper (according to Storage Review, that Raptor "garners the swiftest speeds ever delivered by a mechanical storage" in reasonably priced, home/single user HD solutions).

The truth is, the current Express Cards are terrible "solutions" that fix "problems" that virtually no portable user has.

 

Made sure that when I bought my PC I get PCMCIA slot. I don't care about ExpressCard right now, mostly because of the reasons FormFactor mentioned...there aren't any useful card for me right now either.

However, one halfway decent idea was that (Belkin?) ExpressCard Universal Docking Station though. DVI, Audio, (4x?) USB...you get the idea. That's a good idea for those of us who like docking stations but do not have a business laptop.

 

I would have to say that the guy that started this post really doesn't know very much about laptops.

Wanting an ExpressCard to boost battery life, etc is an impossible notion. That is not what an ExpressCard slot was meant to do in the first place!!!!

That is like asking to have a USB dongle that doubles the amount of RAM you have!!!!!

 

Really?!!!! Please, use some more exclamation points -- just so we understand how excited you are, and it makes your points much more persuasive.

Now, here's the reason I mentioned increased battery life.

Laptops traditionally had space reserved for an optical drive. Using your shortsighted logic, one could most naturally say, "the optical drive was not meant to increase battery life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's not what the optical drive is for!!!!!!!!"

And this is why your shortsighted response fails.

See, some enterprising engineers figured out how to configure swappable optical drives, allowing the optical drive compartment to be replaced with a battery pack. And this was highly successful -- for example, the Thinkpad hot-swappable optical drive/LIon battery combo was fantastic (and I still have my Thinkpad).

Now, my reference to a battery-extending Express Card is not a perfect analogy, but the swappable battery/optdrive functionality was what I had in mind. It wasn't meant to be a perfect analogy. It was merely an idea of something that would be, could be, useful to Express card users, in lieu of the junk currently available.

So, when I hear these weak responses that "x" wasn't meant to do "y," or, "that's not how it works," or "you don't understand," save the diatomic oxygen. It's just an example of something that would be or could be useful -- and if the current standard simply will not permit these kinds of ideas to be implemented, then the standard needs to be revised.

 

Regardless of who is right or wrong, the fact of the matter is that the topic of the post "Expresscards - Useless" is correct at the moment. There hasn't been anything unique produced for ExpressCards so far that PCMCIA couldn't deal with.

The only good thing is that the slot can store remote controls for newer notebooks! *sad*

 

Well right now, there really aren't any designs on the ExpressCard to do things like transfer power to the laptop. Did they ever do that with PCMCIA??? NO...

ExpressCard was designed to provide an external PCIe x1 lane to devices like TV Tuners (hey...there's a good idea). MiniHDDs I believe are in the works, and usually you just boost RAM performance by swapping a stick in where you need it. Security devices are definitely a possibility, but we already have SmartCard slots which fulfill that purpose.

Do you have any idea how little battery life an ExpressCard battery would have??? At least not until we come up with some really high density battery cells...

So how about weak responses like "lets use a slot for what it was designed for?" or "lets not do that because we already have something that fits that functionality perfectly well?"

Wow...totally pointless there. Why don't you tell us what company you work for so that I can make sure I never buy things from you! I never support companies that (to my knowledge) think down on most people.

Wow...that standard was made for a specific purpose (high speed data transfer that PCMCIA doesn't provide), not an all-in-one-godly-port-for-everything-a-notebook-would-ever-need. I like people who think out of the box (OS from ExpressCard would really be nice!), but for god sakes people skills are a must!

 

ExpressCard is a useless, stillborn standard, just like PCI Express 1x and 4x.

I'd be **** pissed if I had a laptop with an ExpressCard slot...

 

Well, I'd be too right now...but one of these days some useful stuff will come out. ExpressCard Universal Dock anyone (w/ DVI!)...it is already out, and that was a good idea. Maybe it'll herald the end of proprietary docking stations (like HP, Dell, or IBM's) and make them available to the non-business masses...

 

Well, you've identified the problem:

At this point, it seems to me the standard was rushed -- you only need look at the dearth of usable products to confirm this.

You don't like my example of proposed useful Express cards. Fine. (Although I didn't hear you criticize my example of hotswapping optical drives and LIon batteries. Using your thinking -- that slot was not designed for that!!!!!!! -- is a crutch and a copout.

Doesn't detract from my original point. And the point remains -- so far the Express cards available on the market are near-worthless (because their functionality is already built in to today's laptops), and the Express card slot is a joke.

Says the person who, out of the box and in the first sentence, points an accusatory finger and says, "you don't know anything about laptops." Pot, kettle, black.

 

When this Belkin Notebook Expansion dock comes out in December

http://www.belkin.com/pressroom/releases/uploads/10_10_06NotebookExpansionDock.html

with the DVI port available via the ExpressCard expansion it'll give the ExpressCard slot a way to champion itself over the legacy PCMCIA type II. Other than that, the only thing we've seen for ExpressCard are what you can already get for PCMCIA.

The ExpressCard slot also costs manufacturers about $5 whereas a PCMCIA is $10 - $15, so of course manufacturers will want to push ExpressCard for this reason too. Whether they pass the cost savings onto you, well, that's a different story.

 

True...but how many laptops out there have this? The market is only just starting to get a good user base.

That was actually one of the more useful things that people have thought of...shame they aren't on all laptops IMHO.

They wanted to replace PCMCIA with something better (data wise). Take a look at all the useful PCMCIA cards out there (a really want a good sound card someday).

I was only pointing out that we haven't thought of odd-ball uses for the PCMCIA card like that.

========================
Personally, I liked the idea of yours with the OS on ExpressCard. That probably WOULD boost the boot time scores on current laptops a lot. Another thing...maybe if they can figure out how to boost the power throughput as well as make it a PCIe x16...GPU anyone? I can see it now...ExpressCard 5.0 (this actually would excite me if they can do it).

But seriously, I feel your pain...I don't like most of the ExpressCard devices out there.

 

Well, the Belkin dock looks interesting for those who need DVI. Or perhaps a more portable docking station.

 

Uh, the optical drive did not provide battery life. The physical bay could be used to house something different, like a battery, yes. But the optical drive itself, its data bus and anything else had nothing to do with this. Just like express cards can not, do not and will not boost your battery life.

That's not to say someone won't pull the same trick again, using the physical slot to connect another battery. But that has nothing to do with the express card standard or specification.

And that is why your response fails. It's ignorant, hostile and rude, and factually flawed to boot.

Oh yes, in the same way that "the optical drive standard" now has a section saying "You can also use this for a spare battery".

If there's one thing that's harder to take serious than people who don't know what they're talking about, it's people who don't know what they're talking about, and then attack anyone who disagree and call them shortsighted.

 

Well, i hope that in the future them will make a ExpressCard PPU, because teoreticly that is possble and that would be a nice future for notebooks.

 

Go for it... I'm interested to see a working prototype in the next 6 months.

You seem to be bypassing the "20 years" bit... 20 years ago wireless as we use today WAS a pipedream, but if you can come up with a technology that should have been around in 20 years time, today, more power to you, I guarantee it will make you very rich.

 

well, since there is some serious heat being generated by this thread, I'll not exress my opinion to much.....wouldn't, want any more name calling to be done as a by product of my statements.
I'll say that there are some good ideas for the future use of express cards floating around on this thread(ie: booting form the card instead of the hard drive, ect).....will they ever make it to production?, maybe. Only time will tell. There are some decent uses for them such as the DVI port and for those who like such things...a TV tuner.

One can only hope that the manufacturers expand their possibilties and make a wider range of desirable used for express cards.

As for all who have exchanged some rather agressive text on this thread....keep in mind that nobody likes to be called ignorent, inintelegent, idiots, and so forth...though there may be some reasons to validate this type of judgement, it would be better if those who are thinking of such things to keep it to themselves or to express there thoughts of others in a less insulting way. Everyone has a right to express there views and thoughts but if there is one thing that I have learned about arguments, it's that left unchecked they will only evovle into all out brawls whether it's though text or physical contact. It's OK to argue just watch what you say.... that way this forum can keep itself from going down the bad road that many similar forums have already begun to travel.

I'm suprised that abaxter posted on this thread(meaning he has read at least some of the post before his) and did not close this thread.
Usually when a thread begins to go in a direction not befitting to this forum, a moderator/admin comes and closes the thread in attempts of stoping over aggressive posting or insulting of ohter forum members....I guess that this particular thread has not yet reached said critical point.

 

This whole thread smells like "My screwdriver sucks at hammering in nails! Why would someone make a screwdriver that doesn't hammer in nails?!!!!!*@!&#onetwo!"

An ExpressCard is just a bus slot. Can you dream up a PCI card do to a function? Then there should be something similar for ExpressCard, either out now, or out soon. I'd love to see a physics accelerator out for an ExpressCard. But it's still just (and ONLY) a data bus. It's not worthless, as it's better in every possible way than PCMCIA. The thing is, it just does the EXACT same job as PCMCIA, only faster and better. It supports hot-swapping, it supports power management, and high bandwidth. I don't know what you expect it to do, but it does everything that it claims to do VERY well.

I just re-read FormFactor's initial post, and I'm not sure if he understands this little thing called "physics". See, everything you do requires power. RAM? Needs battery power. Drives? Them too. You can't get ANYTHING for "free". They should also have biometric ExpressCard readers out sooner or later (they already have PCMCIA versions. ExpressCard is new, and 90% of laptops still have PCMCIA, if anything. Give it time. You want the chicken and egg now, never mind that there aren't any new chickens (cards) from the eggs (card slots) that they've just laid. For a flash booting drive? Make one. No reason it wouldn't work, I know my computer can boot from the ExpressCard slot.

It's not that the slot is worthless, it's that it's new. As a self-proclaimed "visionary", you should be working to make useful things, rather than *****ing that they don't exist.

 

Well aside from the eSata ExpressCards available for use with external Sata drives and that new Belkin ExpressCard docking station, the standard's been somewhat disappointing in offering actual products rather than potential.

 

True...like I said though: the user base is only growing and ever so slowly at that.

 

I guess the question is what is reasonable products for the expresscard slot? What are things you would like to see that are currently missing from the lineup and make use of the fact that the slot has the fast data speeds.

I wouldn't mind seeing a 10GB card that you can use for the OS (flash memory should be able to accomodate that now, given the relative size of that compared to SD memory cards.

Other than that, well I rarely had a need for my PCMCIA card slot (wireless device a few years back when my laptop didn't have wireless, still have a TV card now, used to have a Modem card back in the day when my laptop didn't have an internal modem).

 

That's a great idea. Hope someone in the industry is listening.

 

The only issue with it of course is that Windoze continues to increase in size, so while 10GB might be okay now (and I've not checked the size of my windows folder of late) in the future that size need would grow... also I'm not sure how good flash memory is for storing stuff (or could it be ROM but given windows updates would they be possible? to ROM's)

 

this better not go the way of the ZIP disk drive

 

Assuming there are actually CARDS for it.

I still don't know why Expresscard/54 wasn't made size compatible with PCMCIA so you could make a small bridge card to allow for PCMCIA cards to work in ExpressCard laptops...

ExpressCard sound cards? Zero
ExpressCard WAN Wireless cards? Zero (huge problem for business users to EXpressCard only laptops!)
ExpressCard graphics cards (one of the big selling points)? None

 

ExpressCard GPUs aren't going to work until they increase the bandwidth by a factor of at least 8, not to mention provide a lot more power.

The other two items shouldn't be an issue...but it is probably just a matter of time until it shows up.

 

Laptop sales in the US are up 70% or whatever, a lot of the new models even Dells, etc are coming with ExpressCard, and the phone companies still don't have wireless WAN cards?

"It's coming" is an empty promise to me.

Like the Sound Blaster X-Fi PCI-Express version - "It's coming" - yeah, right. Creative canceled it when they realized the PCI-e bus sucks for low latency operations, they were having a huge problem with dropped frames which was going to require a complete redesign,

 

http://www.pcmcia.org/faq.htm

 

Since FormFactor has wowed us with his infinite knowledge of all things Expresscard (definately a lot of sarcasm in that response, in case you are wondering) I would like to know exactly what FormFactor expects from new Expresscards.

Since the expresscard slot is supposed to improve over the older PCMCIA slots why is it so unreasonable to think that all the stuff out to put in the expresscard slot is (gasp) the same stuff that was in the older PCMCIA slots.

The reason for the switch to expresscard technology is not just to make the name of the type of add-on card easier to pronounce....it is because the older PCI technology is being phased out. So if you think that companies should dream up all sorts of new little goodies for the expresscards, then go ahead and complain about how the slots are worthless now. Seriously what did you expect?

It is likely that 75% of the laptops in use today still have the older PCMCIA slots and that probably won't change for another two or three years. Once expresscard slots become the standard for everyday laptop users then you will start to see a little bit more innovation.

Next time when you want to call someone's opinion short-sighted you might want to step back and look at the shape of things to come!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah I am really THAT excited

 

Lol. Spastic! Midnight run?

 

That is because most of those laptops that use the cellular networks are business laptops with the older PCMCIA slots. Most business laptops from Dell and HP don't have an ExpressCard slot. They aren't going to just abandon PCMCIA; businesses tend to keep a lot of hardware around as long as they can even if it is legacy.

 

yeah, there are a lot of laptops with CompactFlash slots available...

 

I agree with runninkyle17:
USB ports were available on 1994, the first laptop (not mac) with one came on 1998. Nowadays, not to have a USB port is just unthinkable. However, they just got really popular 5 years ago. The first laptop with an Expresscard came on 2004. If we follow the same rule as with the USB, around 2008, having an expresscard will be a necesity and any laptop without one will be useless, just as a laptop without USB nowadays.
In 1998, I'm sure a bunch of people said: "Why we want a USB port" (on that time the only tangible feature was that it didn't need to restart the PC to connect the printer), but then later, gadgets like the USB drives changed their mind. It is difficult to predict what is coming for the Expresscard as well, but it is always better to stay updated.

 

Nah, at most it'll become as popular as PCMCIA is now, which is nowhere near the useage for USB. I've got an ExpressCard slot and I'm just hoping it'll be used before I get my next laptop.

 

Exactly. Has anyone noticed over the last decade or so that laptops went from having (standard) two Type-II PCMCIA slots (with the option of using a Type-III card) to having a single Type-II slot? I'm sure there are some exceptions in the world, mostly 17" and larger systems. But I personally haven't seen two PCMCIA slots on a notebook in a long time. In fact, I have seen more laptops with _zero_ PCMCIA or Expresscard slots (e.g. MacBooks) than two-slot laptops.

Part of this trend is probably due to notebooks getting smaller, but I say part of it is also due to lack of demand. USB supplanted most peoples' needs for a slot, and notebook integration (esp. of wireless network cards) has done the rest. That's why there are no ExpressCard devices out there -- few people want them. What exactly do large numbers of people need to do with their laptops which uses more bandwidth than USB 2.0 provides?

My new laptop has an ExpressCard slot, and I'll probably never use it. But then again, I have never have used the PCMCIA slot on my "old" laptop either. Given a choice between the two, I'd take the newer standard. With the extra bandwidth of ExpressCard there is a better chance that something interesting will come out for that interface which I might want to buy. There are just more things which it can do. So personally I would rename this thread to "Express Cards and PCMCIA Cards -- Worthless". They're about equally worthless to me, and I suspect to most people in general. But given a choice, I'd prefer ExpressCard.

 

I guess you are right, but never know...
...What about a second Hard drive in your expresscard. I mean, those things are getting small... I wonder if it would be fast enough to put some extra RAM...
As I said, it is hard to see the possibilities at this time point. But never underestimate the future...

 

Using ExpressCard slot for eSATA would be perfect for notebooks...

you can get desktop level hard drive performance (and larger hard drive capactiy) for a lot cheaper than using notebook hard drives

i'd be like having an internal SATAII drive on your laptop in terms of performance

I actually was stoked about this until I realized that nothing will fit into the expresscard slot if i have a PCMCIA card in the PCMCIA slot (audigy 2 zs)....bad laptop design!!

The increased bandwidth of ExpressCards creates just so much potential....sure they seem useless now but you never know when something new will come around that requires the bandwidth made available by the expresscard

 

Woah, this is a nice argument. Reading some of the posts, however, made me flashback to the good ol' days when USB ports weren't all the range. If I remember correctly, they were just used for basic peripherals such as mice and keyboards (even then there was the stubborn PS/2 port). Now you can buy everything for the all-powerful USB port interface, from toy missile launchers (reviewed by notebookreview.com!) to 500GB external HDDs. I'm sure ExpressCard will blossom just the same, but of course I'm not implying that it will share the same variety of functionality as USB.

Speaking of PCMCIA cards, could someone post a list of *useful* type II cards (providing functionality, not a crapload of ports)?

 

Recently saw this:

8GB Express Card

Looks interesting. There will be more development as time goes on for the express card format.

 

ExpressCard won't blossom quite like USB did, though. USB allows hubs and chaining, so ExpressCard's main benefit is the crazy bandwidth. It's great for TV tuners, sound cards, possibly storage and such, but it won't supplant USB in any way.

 

use of ExpressCard (and PCMCIA before it) probably also depends on how long one keeps their laptop. On my old laptop it had no CD burner, no integrated wireless, no integrated LAN, and one USB 1.1 port. Did have 2 PCMCIA slots, which had my network cards in them. Wanted a burner with a PCMCIA interface (since the USB ones were limited to 4x) but never got the money for it while in school. My current laptop has 802.11 a/b/g, not n. If I want n it will be through a card (preferably ExpressCard since my PCMCIA slot is busy already) or USB, which leaves a dongle hanging out.

 

Hey, look what I found!! An eSATAII express card adapter!

http://www.nextag.com/Siig-2Port-eSATA-II-86358157/prices-html

 

Wow, great.

 

I am thinking about what to do with my express card slot

flash card doesnt seem too likely because ill use a sd camera card in the camera card slot for readyboost.

I think I want an express card with 1 ext sata port and one 6 pin firewire port. That would max my computer out.

The other alternative is a n wireless card if they come out. But id rather get the mini pci e solution