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It's 2011 Who uses their expresscard/34 slot

jamesschmidtke

jamesschmidtke

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 15, 2008
155
48
Not being sarcastic, just wanted to know what the current uses are and if anyone can't live without it. I ordered a BTO 2011 17" and was a little bummed to lose the sd card slot but am intrigued as to what I may have gained. All the express card threads are pretty old and don't really address why a high end machine that was just refreshed days ago saw it fit to keep this tech. Is this tech dead? Are new developments coming? Or is this just a tide over until thunderbolt peripherals outweigh esata express card adapters?
 
In the past, it was the only way to get fast external storage (eSATA). Now that Thunderbolt is here, I don't see that much use for ExpressCard. Offers more features than the SD card slot though ;)
 
Yeah, have to agree with Hellhammer here.

I wouldn't even call an SD card slot a Pro feature to begin with :p
 
Hellhammer said:
In the past, it was the only way to get fast external storage (eSATA). Now that Thunderbolt is here, I don't see that much use for ExpressCard. Offers more features than the SD card slot though ;)
Click to expand...

The 17" is used by more professionals such as photographers and videographers. Thunderbolt is here but it'll be a while before we see equipment out and at the same time would you want to spend extra money replacing equipment because of a port? They can also be used to add extra firewire ports or even a tv tuner.

I kind of wish they would have both on it but at the same time I understand why they choose the express slot over sd.
 
I only use it for a card reader and generally so do the people I know but there are a few guys out there using it for HDDs.
 
auero said:
The 17" is used by more professionals such as photographers and videographers. Thunderbolt is here but it'll be a while before we see equipment out and at the same time would you want to spend extra money replacing equipment because of a port? They can also be used to add extra firewire ports or even a tv tuner.
Click to expand...

You don't have to replace any equipment. If you have eSATA storage, just get TB to eSATA adapter. TB is based on PCIe so it can provide pretty much anything with an appropriate adapter.
 
You can put a 3G card or a card reader without it having it hanging way out there.
 
Does anyone know about any good international sites for buying expresscard-stuff? The prices are quite high in my country, and I can't find any SSD-cards. Would be great to find a reasonable priced 48GB SSD I can put windows on. :)

If I'm able to, then the expresscard-slot is much more welcome than the sd card reader.
 
I too would much rather have the ExpressCard slot than the SD slot. I have no need for the SD slot. SD is more of a consumer media than "Pro" anyway. Any "Pro" level camera worth using utilizes CF cards anyway. Should Apple have put in a CF slot instead? Perhaps, I know that I would use it but the fact is, the ExpressCard is far more versatile.
 
I never used it in my old 15", and probably won't with my new 17". It'll probably go away in 1-2 refreshes to replaced with something more useful (CF slot that's flush with the case would be awesome)
 
Lots of people still have Expresscard mobile broadband cards. We have them deployed in almost all of our vehicle mounted computers. Fire trucks, EMS vehicles, police cars, inspections vehicles, etc. Granted we don't run Apples, but the usage of the slot is pretty common.
 
dagamer34 said:
I never used it in my old 15", and probably won't with my new 17". It'll probably go away in 1-2 refreshes to replaced with something more useful (CF slot that's flush with the case would be awesome)
Click to expand...

ExpressCard 2.0 will be more useful than any fixed function slot.
 
I could never get it to work properly with my CF reader without a kernel panic attack.... the port has been idle 99.99% of the time I have owned my MBP
 
I have a USB3.0 Expresscard. I did not expect to see Thunderbolt so soon. I wouldn't have gotten one if I did.
 
esata card, but curiously it never gave me performance over ~35 mb/s. It wasn't the hard drive and it wasn't the card, so it must have been some limitation with the slot. Curiously also, fw 400 transfer speeds with the same hd were also ~35 mb/s. This was on a 2007 mbp 15" btw.
 
RE: It's 2011 Who uses their expresscard/34 slot

I use the Sonnet Tempo ExpressCard/34 eSATA adapter in my late 2007 MBP. When copying large files between 2 eSATA connected RAID 0 devices I get about 90 MB/sec so I would say something besides the slot is slowing down your throughput.

What I've found is FW800 is just a little slower than a 7200 RPM single drive so even a single drive will benefit from eSATA (55 MB/sec with FW800 & 65 MB/sec with eSATA).

I'm expecting that Thunderbolt to eSATA adapters will hit the market, does anyone have info on who will be offering them and when we can expect to see them?

Once I can continue using my eSATA devices I'll probably go for one of the new MBPs. Next generation of devices I'll go Thunderbolt, but these eSATA devices have a lot of life left in them.
 
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I never used it in my original Macbook Pro and now that I don't have one in my 2011 version I don't miss it one bit.
 
I've owned my Macbook Pro for 3 years and I've never ever used it. I've never used my FireWire ports either.
 
Freyqq said:
esata card, but curiously it never gave me performance over ~35 mb/s. It wasn't the hard drive and it wasn't the card, so it must have been some limitation with the slot. Curiously also, fw 400 transfer speeds with the same hd were also ~35 mb/s. This was on a 2007 mbp 15" btw.
Click to expand...

The 35MB/s sounds almost like you were using a eSata that was using the USB bus.
 
I use it with an Intel X25 and an enclosure (eSATA). I bought a couple of those eSATA express cards (cheap). On of them is flush and works great.

I get SATA 1 or 2 performance (maybe just STATA 1, not sure). But it's faster than my WD 7200 internal 750GB drive.

On thing that puzzles me, is that apparently, there are 'self powered'
eSATA express cards and enclosures. But it all seems very murky. You would need a special cable I would guess.

Does anyone have any experience with this? ( Of course with the regular eSATA enclosures you need a separate USB cable to power the enclosure (so you a stuck with two cables coming out of it), which fine but messy. )
 
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