Thinkpads Forum

It's been my observation that more expensive ThinkPads have two pcmcia slots, whereas cheaper ones have one. Surely, though, price isn't the main determinant of how many pcmcia slots a ThinkPad would have? What would be a more accurate determinant?

Space. The thinner the laptop, the less room you have for stacking two PCMCIA slots.

All of the systems in my .sig have two PCMCIA slots; the 600s and the T2Xs. What I think is strange is that the 600s, T21 and T22 have only one USB port, while the T23s have two.

rkawakami wrote:What I think is strange is that the 600s, T21 and T22 have only one USB port, while the T23s have two.

Back then there were few USB devices ... no memory sticks, and USB 1.1 was too slow for hard disks. Now even two ports is a bit stingy!

tomh009 wrote:Now even two ports is a bit stingy!

My Dell Inspiron 6000 has four USB2 ports. Are there any Thinkpad models with four or more USB ports?

pianowizard wrote:My Dell Inspiron 6000 has four USB2 ports. Are there any Thinkpad models with four or more USB ports?

None of the current models, at least.

pianowizard wrote:My Dell Inspiron 6000 has four USB2 ports. Are there any Thinkpad models with four or more USB ports?

After some research I discovered that the G40 had four ports. All others are three or fewer, though.

yawnmoth wrote:It's been my observation that more expensive ThinkPads have two pcmcia slots, whereas cheaper ones have one. Surely, though, price isn't the main determinant of how many pcmcia slots a ThinkPad would have? What would be a more accurate determinant?

Nowadays I would say it corresponds with the laptop's thickness. The X60 is as expensive as the T60, but it only has one PCMCIA slot.

The T43 has only one PCMCIA slot.

My R50e appears to be as thick as my R52 but despite that, the R50e has one pcmcia slot, whereas the R52 has two.

My R40 appears to be as thick as my T30 yet the R40 only has one slot, whereas the T30 has two.

In terms of age, the T30 is the oldest, followed by the R40 and the R50e. The R52 is the newest.

pianowizard wrote:The T43 has only one PCMCIA slot.

Yeah, but the rest of the T4X Series have two. The reason the T43 has only one CardBus PCMCIA slot is that the top is taken up by an ExpressCard slot which isn't backward compatible with the older PCMCIA form.

Most of the time, when a laptop gets limited to only one PCMCIA slot, it is because of space and thickness considerations. The T43 is unique in that at least one got replaced by a newer ExpressCard slot. Most of the Thinkpads I have seen, including my 701c, usually put in two PCMCIA ports if they have the space for it and are deemed, like the T Series, slimline workstations that have to maintain connectivity along with mobility.

The Dell M65 Precision has the space to have two PCMCIA slots but, as with the T43, one is actually an ExpressCard slot. Athough their placement on the Dell is infuriatingly non-standard as one, the ExpressCard, is where the slots on a T43 would be and the one that is more commonplace, the CardBus, is mounted way low down on the side of the chassis in a recessed area with a clearance that makes it near impossible to use any PCMCIA card that has some sort of physical extension.