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MacBook Pro's Express Card Slot?

G

gwihannom

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 16, 2008
89
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With the new design, many ports and features were eliminated/changed. (i.e. No FireWire port on the MacBook, Display Ports changed to Mini, etc.)

But weird things is... what do you use for express card slot?

It must be necessary with something, because Apple eliminated a modem port but left this thing on there.
(Not that the two are relevant, just curious why they didn't just eliminate a function people rarely use. Or am I the only one that don't know what it is =P)

Well, it's not just Apple that has an express card slot,
Now I realize that most of the notebooks I have seen and used DO come with express card slot of some sort. (I think, right?)
I don't know why I didn't bother to wonder what an express card was or even cared to use one.

What is it? And what are some ideas that I could use it for?
 
I use mine for:
1) eSATA ports
2) UDMA CF adapter
3) 8-in-1 card reader
4) AT&T 3G modem
5) FW800/400 ports
6) USB 2.0 ports

Would have been nice to have slot on the MacBook to add FW considering.
 
Huh. You guys are right. I never thought about using it for these purposes. I guess I always thought they were only available through USB, since that's how I've been using it for the equipments you all listed.

But, yeah, it definitely makes sense to use it for things like a memory card reader. I've always connected my digital camera through an USB cable that came with it. Simply taking it out and plugging it through a card that goes into an express card slot makes good sense. Never thought about that.

That's good. I'll look into this.
 
gwihannom said:
But, yeah, it definitely makes sense to use it for things like a memory card reader. I've always connected my digital camera through an USB cable that came with it. Simply taking it out and plugging it through a card that goes into an express card slot makes good sense. Never thought about that.

That's good. I'll look into this.
Click to expand...

Also if you have a memory card that supports UDMA, the transfer over PCI-Express is a lot faster than USB.
 
also can be used for:

1279955472.jpg

1SegTV - (req 1Seg Broadcasting)

magmaexpresscard2.jpg

Magma 7-Slot EX34 to PCIe 4U Expansion Chassis, or take the 6 slot version, so you can make your MBP run DigiDesignPro with all it's hardware... Not CHEAP!
 
I have a griffin card reader, which seats perfectly in my new MBP. In my last gen MBP, it stuck out a little.
 
Heh, I remember looking into a PCMCIA card solution for high quality digital audio output when I had a PowerBook Pismo. The Mac peripheral market sure has changed since even then.
 
I want a single e-sata port expresscard/34 card that doesn't stick out and bulge and be all gross... unfortunately i probably wont' find one because esata requires a bit more hardware than the inside portion of an expresscard/34 port has room for
 
Could be the infamous kernel panic screen saver, doubt it but poster hasn't responded so don't wanna make judgment just yet. Was pretty funny though to promote a product and see what it did to their MacBook. ;)
 
ivinho said:
could a SSD expresscard be used as memory?
Click to expand...

Not as RAM using Mac OS X, no.

Possibly if you had Vista running on the Mac, using VMWare/Parallels of bootcamp - you might then be able to use the expresscard memory as memory in Windows, as Vista of course has that capability.

Realistically though, a Macbook Pro supports 4GB of memory and I can't see why you'd need more than that on a mobile computer. If you do need more than that, you need a workstation and not a laptop.
 
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