What's the future of Expresscard?

Okay, I have had 3 laptops with expresscard slots, and found TWO cards i could put in the slots! I had read somewhere that expresscard is more or less a PCI express 'slot' (not exactly the same) and that the bus rate is sufficiently high enough to permit aftermarket accessories like external graphics cards (that would be one hell of an accomplishment) and high-speed device controllers.

So my question is this: Does anybody know of any cards on the market that do anything particularly useful that a PCMCIA card couldn't? What's the whole point of having them if, according to dell's own customize-it system, there 'are no expresscard options currently available on the market'?

Any ideas?

 

Well, this has been discussed before...but ExpressCard GPUs are NOT going to happen. Not enough bandwidth.

As for the future...who knows. But I know only ONE or TWO devices have come out that would actually be useful...in almost two years. It'll take time for this to be adopted.

 

expresscard is one of those promising technologies that isn't very useful at the moment... it performs very well, its just that many products haven't been made for it--even though its not all that new. However, i imagine that it'll pick up steam as time goes on. Bottom line is, don't let expresscard make/break your decision. It's really something that is trivial now, and even a couple years down the road you probably won't need it, unless you can think of something that you would need it for that a pcmia card won't do...

 

I'm afraid that we're looking at another chicken&egg situation here... much like USB was when it was first introduced.

Peripherial manufacturers haven't gotten around to making Expresscard versions of their products since notebooks have only really started to feature it over the last 6-8 months... but rest assured it will take off, the benefits are too strong too ignore. It's faster, less power hungry and cheaper to produce products for.

Products I've seen so far that are worthwhile are a HDTV tuner card, HSDPA wireless card, eSATA card and a very nice looking universal dock that can handle DVI at decent resolutions.

If you're feeling frustrated, think of those guys who had 4-6 USB ports on their machines and nothing to plug into them for nearly two years...

 

I use my eSATA express card all the time. Its attached to two different expernal eSATA drive enclosures. Its nice and fast when I need it for encoding, etc.

 

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4500

 

RogueMonk, what are your external HDD data transfer rates via the eSATA connection on the ExpressCard slot? Can you say play a 3D game smoothly from your external drives? I know the theoretical maximums for eSATA, but I don't want to invest in such an expensive purchase until I am sure.

Oh yeah, I am looking to buy a ExpressCard/eSATA HDD enclosure combo so that I won't be limited by USB's bandwidth. Any recommendations on the brand of the card/enclosure?

 

Well, assuming it's ExpressCard/54 (using the PCI-Express connection) then the bandwidth there is 4.0Gb/s / 500MB/s, so that would be the limit. Should be above what eSATA supports...

 

the ExpressCard connection to the computer is identical for either 34 or 54. I'd assume the extra width of 54 is just to give more space for electronics inside the card.

 

Anyone else here actually own one? I would like some NBR member testimonials to guide me here.

 

PCMCIA was PCI and ExpressCard is PCI-E. They just attached fancy names to them to describe the type of slot. PCMCIA is the same speed as using a PCI card in a desktop and ExpressCard is the same speed as using a PCI-E card in a desktop.

There should be no difference between using an external eSATA drive vs an internal SATA drive on your laptop. The transfer rates are going to be the same as long as the external enclosure supports everything. It's not like comparing USB or Firewire to SATA because they are quite different from each other.

 

Yes, thanks again for the explanation. However, if anyone else actually owns such a configuration (PCIe<---Expresscard converter<---External SATA HDD), please let me know how it performs. Even a casual observation would be helpful, as I simply cannot find such a setup in stores anywhere near here and nobody I know has even considered it (everyone buys the USB external HDD's). This is not exactly a tried and true method due to the lack of ExpressCard support---although the hardware theory is sound the manufacturing/implementation is often flawed---so I'd like to hear it from someone here who might have such a configuration. In fact if someone here can shout out "I use X card with Y HDD and it runs just as fast as my internal HDD" I'm off to buy.com or newegg.

 

I have an ExpressCarD sata II card (brand = iconnect). I have it hooked up to both a generic 2.5inch SATA enclosure and a Vantec eSATA encolsure. They both preform at full speeds.

The ExpressCard uses a silicon image chip.

 

Cool I'll look into that, thanks RogueMonk.

 

gatordude123 - The eSATA speeds are identical to internal speeds for the same drive. In fact, I have a second XP install running off an eSATA drive (via the ExpressCard). My W7J boots directly from it! Because its a desktop HD, its faster than my internal drive. I use it mainly for encoding.

 

Hi,

Did you just do a normal install of XP on the eSATA drive? 'cos I heard there are tons of problems getting XP to run on external drives (USB and firewire)....what about eSATA? Have you tried Vista on it?

 

Yes, I did a normal install of XP on it.

Yes, I have also tried Vista on it.

Don't get mixed up. SATA is quite different from USB and Firewire. Essentially it take the internal SATA specifcation and makes port available externally. You get all the benefits and compatability of SATA, just in an external enclosure. Your drive function just like an internal SATA drive.

 

That presents an interesting point of maybe setting up an external 10,000rpm 3.5" hard drive with your OS on it and just running it over eSATA. It would certainly eliminate the issue of being bottlenecked on a laptop from a slower 2.5" drive.

 

But having that all set up kinda brings up the whole "why are you even running a notebook in the first place?" point. May as well get a desktop and have it cheaper if you have to set up all that stuff for your notebook.

 

Very good point.

My main uses are external storage, and media encoding.

I also like the ability to have different OS setups (eg. Vista) just for playing around with.

 

One hard drive and a small 3.5" enclosure for it isn't very much stuff. A lot of people have an external hard drive for storage anyways since laptop hard drives aren't that big. With a desktop you have the tower and a monitor and keyboard and other things that keep it from being portable. A notebook with a small external enclosure is pretty easy to pack up and take to a new location. Granted you wouldn't bother taking it with you if you were out using it in public or something but if you are set up at a desk and need better disk performance then it would be something to consider.

 

I think it will be some time. More Expresscard products will be released as the format becomes more mainstream. And the general public/consumer is usually very slow to adopt new technology. But eventually the PCMCIA will be phased out--it's already starting--and be replaced by Expresscard.

 

...it's the same idea behind docking stations and things... when you're at "home base" you can couple up to a bunch of stuff you don't need on the road. But when you're on the road you need most of the functionality of your "main computer". At my home station I hook up extra monitors and hard drives and such things... but when I have to visit the client overseas or wherever, I still need my fully setup and running development environment, emails, productivity software... whatever I have on my laptop day-to-day.

And if you have a nice processor and everything in your laptop, but just need a faster drive for encoding... then just the money for the external drive is a bargain!

 

do you have to use an AC adaptor for the external case? or is there some way to power it from the laptop? I have seen some cardreaders for desktops which include SATA ports, but it didn't look like they included SATA power ports.

 

I do think that we need an AC adaptor to run a 3.5" hard disk...do correct me if i'm wrong...

my thoughts are that i will have two operating systems...one on the laptop and one on the external drive...and when i'm "home", I will boot off that external drive (For speed I guess?) but all my documents will always be saved into the laptop harddisk...

I guess what some have mentioned is right...it's just like a docking system...and since the hard disk of a laptop is usually the bottleneck of it, why not spend just abit more to enjoy better speeds...with much larger storage space...which may definitely help in encoding/decoding

Best of all....it's really much more economical than spending on a 2.5" 7200rpm harddisk...though you sacrifice on mobility..

 

Some use an AC adapter, some are powered through a USB port and some are battery powered.

 

just got myself a Nexstar 3 3.5" enclosure with a Seagate hd....and ordered through amazon a Siig esata Expresscard w/raid....gonna have to wait 1-2 weeks for it to be shipped all the way here...sigh..long wait..