The venerable PC Card has been around for at least 16 years. In dog years, which I believe are roughly equivalent to computer years, the PC Card is a staggering 112 years old.
Rather than being taken into the woods and put out of its misery, the PC Card is doing a slow fade-out. Fading into its place is the ExpressCard, which is designed to be thinner, lighter, and faster.
With ExpressCard slots becoming more commonplace in notebooks, I thought it was time for a primer. This week I've got the backstory on ExpressCards and how they differ from PC Cards. Check back next week to find out if you can use an ExpressCard in a PC Card slot and vice versa.
In 2003 the ExpressCard standard was introduced by the trade group behind the PC Card as a successor to that standard. The first ExpressCard modules appeared in 2004.
Similar in function to a PC Card, an ExpressCard allows you to easily add capabilities such as extra storage and wireless wide area networking to a notebook or desktop PC. Because they're faster than PC Cards, ExpressCards are particularly well suited for TV tuners, Gigabit Ethernet adapters, FireWire ports, and other devices that depend heavily on fast data transfer rates.
ExpressCards are available in two sizes. Both are 5mm thick and 75mm long and use the same 26-pin connector. One version, called ExpressCard/34, is 34mm wide. The other, ExpressCard/54, is 54mm wide. By comparison, all PC Cards are 5mm thick, 86mm long, and 54mm wide.
Many ExpressCard developers are opting to design products to fit the ExpressCard/34 format, in the belief that smaller is always better. However, some products, such as CompactFlash readers and hard drives with 1.8-inch platters, won't fit on the smaller card, so a larger format is needed.
ExpressCard/34 cards will fit either an ExpressCard/34 or ExpressCard/54 card slot, but ExpressCard/54 cards will fit into an ExpressCard/54 slot only. Many new notebooks include an ExpressCard/54 slot.
PC Card technology uses a special I/O system to communicate with the host PC. The ExpressCard standard, however, was designed to interface directly with USB 2.0 and the emerging PCI Express buses that are standard in nearly all current PCs. This makes it easier and less expensive for developers to support the ExpressCard standard than it is to support the PC Card standard. As a result, some desktop computer makers--which traditionally didn't bother offering a PC Card slot--are incorporating ExpressCard slots into their designs. The upshot is that you can use one ExpressCard device on either a notebook or desktop PC, as long as each one has an ExpressCard slot.
The two types of device also differ in throughput speeds. In theory, the maximum throughput for the PC Card standard is 132MB per second. ExpressCard throughput tops out at 2.5GB per second for PCI Express and 480MB per second for USB 2.0 interfaces.
Mobile Computing News, Reviews, & TipsWith Apple's iPhone not expected to be available until June, many questions linger, such as: What will be the monthly service cost? What will the data plans cost? Will the Yahoo e-mail push option be extra? Will it be possible to buy an iPhone without a wireless contract? How fast will it be?
Read the
The new Nokia N93i features one of the better video cameras we've seen in a phone. The N93i can capture MPEG-4 video at 640-by-480 resolution and 30 frames per second. The catch? This GSM/GPRS/EDGE phone may never be offered by a U.S. carrier, but it will be available overseas.
Another recent cell phone dazzler: the new LG VX9400, one of the first handsets to support Verizon's new V CAST Mobile TV service. The phone, scheduled to be offered by Verizon in the first quarter, features a screen you can swivel to watch TV in landscape mode.
Read "CES: Multimedia Cell Phones Take Center Stage" for more on these and other upcoming phones.
G-Tech has announced its Secure Sound Laptop Sleeve, a water-resistant notebook bag with two built-in, 35-watt speakers. The speakers can run for up to 8 hours on three AAA batteries, the company claims--or they can suck power from your notebook. The bag costs $39 to $49 and should be available soon. Read "Digital Gear: Unique Gadgets at CES" for more about this bag and other cool new gear.
Is there a particularly cool mobile computing product or service I've missed? Got a spare story idea in your back pocket? Tell me about it. However, I regret that I'm unable to respond to tech-support questions, due to the volume of e-mail I receive.
James A. Martin
