"Express Card... *huh* What is it good for... absolutely nothing..."

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Bahamut

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Say it again!!! Ok, corny but... I was just wondering about this. I've got this Dell Latitude E4300 laptop now, and it's got a SmartCard slot on the left side which I'll never ever have any use for whatsoever, and an SD card slot in the front (good place for it) and I can make use of that at some point, maybe slap an 8 or 16GB card in there and dump mp3 files on it since they require so little bandwidth for playback, that sort of thing.

But then on the right side there's this ExpressCard/34 slot and... for the life of me I can't think of a damned thing to do with it. I spent some time doing research into ExpressCards (I'm very familiar with what they are and how they work) but I honestly can't figure out what to do with it.

I know that some "SSD" type ExpressCards exist, but I've yet to find one that offers decent performance for the cost, let alone a decent amount of storage space on top of that. And I'm not interested in using it for something like a serial port, extra USB ports (although this laptop only has 2 - one is a regular USB port and the other is an eSATA/USB combo one, and I have a powered 7-port USB hub anyway), external video work (got a VGA port), docking connector purposes (got one of those underneath with a docking station that offers dual DVI out if I want to get one and more USB ports too), etc.

And I don't need to use it for 3G/4G capability either even with only 2 USB ports - it's got a WWAN slot in the bottom ready for whatever mini-PCI-Express card I choose to put in it. Been looking at the Intel Ultimate-N 6300 lately, it's a half-mini-PCI-E card (like the 5300AGN I have is) but on top of it being an 11abgn Wi-Fi card it's also a WiMAX/4G card too. Talk about good things coming in small packages, sheesh. :)

So the question becomes...

What the hell good is an ExpressCard slot for? :D

If it was an actual PCMCIA/PC card slot, I'd have stuff ready to go for it since I have a few PC cards laying around, a few Wi-Fi cards, even an old Xircom PC card modem but that requires a Type III slot of course, and some others laying around (USB ports, serial, etc).

Does anybody out there actually make use of the ExpressCard slot in their laptops, if you have one in your laptops? Just curious as someone might be able to point me to something interesting to do with the capability, or maybe they know of an "SSD" type ExpressCard that offers good/great performance at a decent price with a decent amount of storage to go with it.

For it's size, this little E4300 is damned amazing in how much stuff Dell crammed into it, I'm just trying to find ways of making use of all the potential.

So if you've got an ExpressCard slot and care to join in, let me know what you use it for... maybe I'll come up with something at some point.
 
Deevious said:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/418851-diy-vidock-experiences.html
Click to expand...

Yah, I know, but I'm not a gamer... that's irrelevant to me (but yes it IS something that can be done with the slot, yeah, I got that).

MikeTrike said:
Three words:
Mobile Broadband Card
Click to expand...

Guess you missed this part:

Bahamut said:
And I don't need to use it for 3G/4G capability either even with only 2 USB ports - it's got a WWAN slot in the bottom ready for whatever mini-PCI-Express card I choose to put in it. Been looking at the Intel Ultimate-N 6300 lately, it's a half-mini-PCI-E card (like the 5300AGN I have is) but on top of it being an 11abgn Wi-Fi card it's also a WiMAX/4G card too. Talk about good things coming in small packages, sheesh. :)
Click to expand...

Yanno, WWAN = mobile broadband, aka 3G/4G/WiMAX/EVDO/HSPDA+/etc etc... :p No sense using an external slot for such a device when the laptop has the internal capability already.
 
Bahamut said:
What the hell good is an ExpressCard slot for? :D
Click to expand...

I know you mentioned USB 2.0 ports, buuuuuut http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16839104025

and, nope, you can't get that in Cardbus/PCMCIA form -- too slow :D.

Also, Cardbus/PCMCIA/"whatever the hell they call it nowadays" is a pretty much dead technology. Extinct. Like floppies and SmartMedia memory cards. Last thing I bought for a PCMCIA slot was a Creative Audigy 2 zs notebook card, and that was over 4 years ago! Now it just collects dust in my closet.
 
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Yah, I knew the USB 3.0 thing would come along but, it's useless at the moment and I have an eSATA port, don't tell me you missed that part too? :D

USB 3.0 won't be of any real use to me or most folks for a long time to come I think. It will matter someday but, that day ain't today, least not for me...

Oh well, the more I think about it the more I keep realizing that slot is for all intents and purposes useless. If I get a nice ExpressCard SSD, I can't use it as a boot drive - this laptop won't boot from it from all the info I've researched (other E4300 owners, the manual, user guide, Dell forums, etc). Would be nice to use for some additional storage I suppose but, when I consider the cost of a 48GB SSD (about $150 or less) and then figure I could just get 3 500GB 7200 rpm laptop hard drives for that cost or a 2TB monster and attach it with the eSATA port it does seem like a waste of funds...

Would be awesome if something like a 256GB Flash-RAM ExpressCard drive existed - a device that's in the ExpressCard slot but it's composed of the type of Flash-RAM you find on regular USB sticks, not the high speed stuff in SSDs nowadays.

I actually have a lot of space inside this laptop, could probably find some ways to rig up whatever in the guts since it's so "empty" - there's a Latitude ON module I don't have, so that's space there, there's no WWAN card (won't need one if I get that Intel 6300 card) so that's more space, etc.

Damn... seems like a slot like this would prove useful to me in some ways... ugh.
 
If it's so horribly useless, how about you just not use it?

You could just use it for a SWAP drive or something, so it's not 100% useless. But rather 99% useless...
 
MikeTrike said:
If it's so horribly useless, how about you just not use it?

You could just use it for a SWAP drive or something, so it's not 100% useless. But rather 99% useless...
Click to expand...

I'm already not using it, that's the point; I'm trying to find a use for it... :)
 
Bahamut said:
I'm already not using it, that's the point; I'm trying to find a use for it... :)
Click to expand...

Is it hurting you not being used? Sounds more like OCD. :p

But seriously, just throw a cheap 4-8GB SSD and throw your swap on there to offload it from your main drive.

I think I'm going to order one tomorrow for that very purpose. :) I guess I can thank you for starting the thread after all.
 
A consideration I suppose but, 4GB of DDR3 already in this machine and 512MB of that is for a RAMdisk for temp/etc variables, Firefox Portable and a few other apps. Can't find any ExpressCard SSDs with decent performance in the 4-8GB range... if you happen upon one with something worthwhile for performance, by all means post the info/brand/link, thanks.
 
Yah, I'd seen that one on Newegg, just not in the "business" section so, reading the reviews now. Halfway split I suppose, about half like it and praise it, the other half hate it and complain about the heat (which does seem excessive by those reports and others I just read). Weird...

One guy there in the Newegg reviews claims he found a way to get his Dell laptop to boot off it as well even though his BIOS (like mine) doesn't explicitly offer the option to do so. Now I'm curious... :D
 
The ExpressCard slot is very good if you are heavy-user of virtualization. And I mean full-scale virtualization usage where you prefer mobility and yet want some I/O performance

For the latest business oriented laptop models, it may come with
2 x USB2.0
1 x USB2.0/eSATA
1 x ExpressCard/34 or 54

A. For all local storage test,
1. You can fill eSATA port with connection to Dual-Disk or higher storage enclosure with eSATA connection
2. To bring up more disk for IOPS, you can put ExpressCard eSATA and connect more storage enclosure.

With this method you could get 1 (2.5" internal) + 4 (external) disks into full VM test environment.

B. For non-local storage
1. You could fill the ExpressCard slot with another Gigabit ethernet port. This is actually handy for more complicated VM test environment.
2. You can use the ExpressCard ethernet connection as dedicated Storage over IP connection to your NAS. Also, In heavy VM storage test, the Ethernet card will be under high stress and frequently quite warm. It is ok for desktop but may become an issue in tight laptop environment. Letting the ExpressCard net connection deal with it sometimes better than using the default on-board ethernet port.

there are probably many other scenario where a second ethernet connection likely helpful in VM test.
 
I have 3 things that fit into the ExpressCard/34 slot:

1) multimedia remote (uses no interface :p) http://www.geeks.com/imageshare/T/300x300/TSGU-IR01-unit.jpg
2) 8GB flash drive (uses USB portion of the slot) http://img.pricebat.ca/productimage/normal/10074873.jpg
3) eSATA card http://www.pacificgeek.com/productimages/xl/IO-NSA2-EC-WB.jpg

My HP tablet came with 1) but I have another for my XPS 16. The "internal" flash drive is handy for backups. The HP tablet lacks eSATA, so I got a 2 port eSATA ExpressCard for it.
 
my 3 year old MSI laptop has a exprescard 54 slot, dont use it, dont particularly care either...

I guess i might use a slot like that for a *GOOD* SSD or a sound card, but i dont really have the need for it..
 
Bahamut said:
If it was an actual PCMCIA/PC card slot, I'd have stuff ready to go for it since I have a few PC cards laying around,
Click to expand...
ok
a few Wi-Fi cards
Click to expand...
not sure why you want this, but here
http://www.amazon.com/Belkin-Wireless-Express-Card-N1/dp/B000KH2M7C
even an old Xircom PC card modem but that requires a Type III slot of course,
Click to expand...
yeah, couldn't find something for this. they make this guy though
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-_-Modems-_-Zoom+Technologies+Inc.-_-25115031
and some others laying around (USB ports, serial, etc).
Click to expand...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...rds/PCMCIA+Add-on+Cards-_-STARTECH-_-39158005
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...C+Cards/PCMCIA+Add-on+Cards-_-Syba-_-39328026


what else did you need?
 
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serpretetsky said:
ok

*snip*

what else did you need?
Click to expand...

I don't need any of that; did you even read my OP? :)

I have 11n wireless built in already, no use for a dialup modem ever, and I have a 7 port USB hub and even a Keytronics USB -> Serial port device already.

I was pointing out that I already had those types of devices, not that I was interested in getting them. Bleh... seems we've got a communication issue.

Maybe I need a Universal Translator ExpressCard from the year 2459 or something... ;)
 
Yanno, I 'm gonna have to go with the "then don't use it" crowd. My last laptop had a Firewire port that never had been used nor it ever will (RIP). Same thing goes for its port replicator...um...port. We can't have all our holes filled. That's what she said!
 
Maybe you need to find something better to worry about and put so much effort into. Like solving world hunger, shelters for the homeless, etc.

Maybe you can invent an express card device that would someday help with a real problem. :p

</sarcasm>
 
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