What do you use your ExpressCard/54 slot for?

Message

#1 Post by **Harryc** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 11:33 am

I am interested to learn what cards work in the ExpressCard/54 slot in a T60 and which cards folks are using. For example, eSATA cards are popular on Macs because you can hook up an external eSATA drive (2 drives in Raid) and it is faster than Firewire. Has anyone tried this? Anyone run firewire 800? TV cards? Sound cards? Others? Please list the manufacturer, model, your hookup configuration, and retail source.

Brad · #2 Post by **Brad** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 12:35 pm

Harry,

I have used mine for the Verizon broadband card.

I was out of town and wanted to have a connection that was independent of any hotel or airport.

It worked very nicely.

Brad

#3 Post by **Harryc** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 1:01 pm

Brad wrote:... I have used mine for the Verizon broadband card.

Great Brad, thanks. I'd like to check out the cost of the card and rates. Maybe I'll try the Verizon site. I do have Verizon wired broadband here, but Nextel Cellular service. So I suspect the cost might be too high for me. Which card did you get and from where? Directly from Verizon?

#4 Post by **tomh009** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 1:38 pm

You could get a Sprint/Nextel broadband card instead -- the CDMA technology is the same as Verizon.

#5 Post by **Harryc** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 1:55 pm

tomh009 wrote:You could get a Sprint/Nextel broadband card instead -- the CDMA technology is the same as Verizon.

Nice, anyone have any experience with any of the Sprint cards? Look at the size of the antenna on this AC597e

Built in GPS too ... sweet.

Sierra AC597e

Brad · #6 Post by **Brad** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 7:07 pm

The Verizon card directly from Verizon is $80 per month without a qualifying voice plan and $60 per month with.

Brad

SafeHarbor · #7 Post by **SafeHarbor** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 7:55 pm

I have the VZW wireless card, and the plan has been $59/mo since I got it in August, 2005. I certainly did not have a voice plan with VZW - I had a Smartphone on ATTW. When they asked for my cell phone number, I thought it curious, but I gave it to them.

Verizon switched over to Rev. A EVDO a few days ago. My card won't take advantage of it, so I'll be changing cards when my 2-year agreement goes off contract next month. (I do have a phone on VZW now - another Smartphone - a Moto Q.)

tourist.Tam · #8 Post by **tourist.Tam** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 11:30 am

Hi,

I have been dreaming about that mouse the Mogo, yet still to be released. I am sure it has been mentioned before. But it still looks like the think for a real experience "on the move".

Tam

skanky · #9 Post by **skanky** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 1:41 pm

i got a lexar 8gb ssd to use in mine. have set up a 4gb readyboost drive and the rest is used as data backup.

smoothoperator · #10 Post by **smoothoperator** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 6:43 pm

tourist.Tam wrote:Hi,

I have been dreaming about that mouse the Mogo, yet still to be released. I am sure it has been mentioned before. But it still looks like the think for a real experience "on the move".

Tam

Does that mouse actually flip up like the old mogo mouse? or do you have to use it as a handheld mouse? Do you have to use an adapter on the X60/61's since they only have a Cardbus slot?

Somewhat Damaged · #11 Post by **Somewhat Damaged** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 12:11 am

belkin pre-n wireless adapter, which coincides with my belkin pre-n router to give me a wireless connection at 108mpbs (land connections are usually 100

)

depending on how good of a connection the actual website is, i can download at speeds over 500kb/sec.

mdclow · #12 Post by **mdclow** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 7:32 am

I am using mine to read SD media cards. I purchased the Addonics 4 in 1 ExpressCard 34 Model#AD4IN1EXC34.

I am close to purchasing a Belkin FireWire ExpressCard F5U505 so I can download video (CDW has them for $70 vs $90 direct from Belin).

#13 Post by **Harryc** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 8:00 am

mdclow wrote:I am close to purchasing a Belkin FireWire ExpressCard F5U505 so I can download video (CDW has them for $70 vs $90 direct from Belin).

I might do this as well because I have an external firewire hard drive sitting here. Did you do any research on firewire cards and is this model Belkin one of the better ones?

mdclow · #14 Post by **mdclow** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 8:17 am

I did find out that the ExpressCard FireWire is MUCH faster than CardBus Firewire. I my casual shopping searches I did see that the prices appear to be in the $70 to $100 range. But beyond the above I have not done any research on various providers of ExpressCard Firewire.

I like Belkin because it is a name brand & I have called their support several times (pre purchase questions on a couple of items) and always gotten a person in North America who was knowledgeable. Plus I never waited more than a few minutes to get to talk with a person.

rukiri · #15 Post by **rukiri** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 10:44 am

skanky wrote:i got a lexar 8gb ssd to use in mine. have set up a 4gb readyboost drive and the rest is used as data backup.

I owe you a debt of grattitude skanky. I had assumed those things were still stratospheric in price, but your comment encouraged me to actually look it up. To my great, and pleasant surprise, a quick search turned up results in the 80 dollar range.

This prompted me to immediately call Lenovo and tell them to take out the turbo memory on an order I placed recently.

Why pay 50 bucks for a 1GB flash module when you can buy this 8GB SSD for 80 bucks! Thank You!

edit:
As a side note, could you comment on your experiences with the SSD? does the HD stay off most of the time? How is battery life? Have you tried splitting it 50/50 like Intel's Turbo Memory, 4GB going to ReadyBoost as well?

f00kie · #16 Post by **f00kie** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 11:10 am

skanky wrote:i got a lexar 8gb ssd to use in mine. have set up a 4gb readyboost drive and the rest is used as data backup.

Does this card stick out of the laptop?

Also, any noticeable performance gain from the ReadyBoost part?

rukiri · #17 Post by **rukiri** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 11:23 am

It does not stick out, it fits flush to the laptop.

good review and lots of good discussion about the lexar 8gb SSD

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthr ... ?p=2064348

#18 Post by **Harryc** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 12:22 pm

ReadyBoost - 31X speed increase in access time over a conventional hard drives cache access. It sounds like some very fast cache

. If you frequently run the machine on hard drive cache, I can see where this would be an advantage in Vista. I'm just wondering how often the average user would do that with 2GB of RAM already installed ...
I'm confused by this comment as well at the Newegg link below, "Ridiculously slow, about 10 times slower than my 5400 rpm laptop hard drive."

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820191057

rukiri · #19 Post by **rukiri** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:30 am

Some people were reporting 5MB/s transfer rates.. which is what that guy is referring to. Not sure why. Other reviews show ~30MB/s transfer rates, which seems to be the correct figure. For comparison, a 80GB Hitachi 5400 that came w/my T61 averages ~37MB/s, so it's certainly comparable.

More importantly, the random access time for the HD is ~17ms.. compared to ~0.7ms for the Lexar SSD Definitely an improvement : )

Will this speed up your user experience if you already have enough system memory to avoid excessive page filing? No, of course not.

Personally, I'm more interested in trying to use it for ReadyDrive, or in some other way telling Vista to use it instead of the HD as aggressively as possible. Ideally, I'd want vista to only spin up the HD if I actively save or open a file.

If that's not possible.. I guess the only real solution is to get a SATA SDD drive.. but those are still way more pricey...

#20 Post by **Harryc** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 5:24 am

rukiri wrote: Will this speed up your user experience if you already have enough system memory to avoid excessive page filing? No, of course not.

That's the point then, it's kind of useless to buy one for readyboost in many instances.

cwestwater · #21 Post by **cwestwater** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 5:25 am

I have a Lenovo Smart Card reader in mine.

botond · #22 Post by **botond** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 1:08 am

SafeHarbor wrote:I have the VZW wireless card, and the plan has been $59/mo since I got it in August, 2005. I certainly did not have a voice plan with VZW - I had a Smartphone on ATTW. When they asked for my cell phone number, I thought it curious, but I gave it to them.

Verizon switched over to Rev. A EVDO a few days ago. My card won't take advantage of it, so I'll be changing cards when my 2-year agreement goes off contract next month. (I do have a phone on VZW now - another Smartphone - a Moto Q.)

Why don't you tether your Moto Q to your laptop and use the broadband access from your phone? its only 35/month with VZW this way, and since you already have a smartphone...

WilsonF · #23 Post by **WilsonF** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 7:41 am

I use mine to back up to (and hopefully will never have to restore from) an eSATA drive.

steveg47 · #24 Post by **steveg47** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 8:51 am

WilsonF wrote:I use mine to back up to (and hopefully will never have to restore from) an eSATA drive.

Which esata expresscard are you using? Are you satisfied with it's performance?

cinergi · #25 Post by **cinergi** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 6:35 pm

steveg47 wrote:
WilsonF wrote:I use mine to back up to (and hopefully will never have to restore from) an eSATA drive.
Which esata expresscard are you using? Are you satisfied with it's performance?

I'm not who you were asking but I'm using the "SIIG SC-SAE512-S1 SATA II ExpressCard 54" (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6839150001) on my T60p and I'm very happy with it. I use it to host my VMWare Workstation virtual disks and it's ridiculously fast with a Western Digital 400 GB drive.
For the external chassis, I'm using the "VANTEC Nexstar 3 NST-360U2-BK Aluminum 3.5" USB 2.0 External Enclosure" (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817145131)
I find that it gets pretty warm after using it for a while, however.

What do you use your ExpressCard/54 slot for?

What do you use your ExpressCard/54 slot for?

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