As glial said (while i was typing! that's so cool!), they're technically PCMCIA cards.. but in the vernacular, people just call them pc cards. But PC Cards, and especially PC Card slots, are sort of a hold over from earlier days of laptops (as in, they were around before USB, i'm pretty sure), as a general way of expanding upon the laptop's functionality / features, etc. As extol hinted at, the ability to add an Ethernet port to the computer was what really kept PC cards viable, as they became very widely used for that purpose. After that, they became very widely used again when wireless was first coming out, and thus laptop manufacturers decided to keep making them, since they continued to prove useful for helping move computers into the next stage of internet readiness.. per se. :)
that said, however, there are a number of other things that you can get pc cards for, although they haven't been as widely produced. these include things like USB hubs, or USB 2.0 cards.. if you're computer only had 1.0 ports.. or even hard drives, which have been a little bit more widely produced. although i do remember looking for sometime once trying to find a pc card hard drive that would add a significant amount of gigs to my memory, but never really found something where the price/storage space ratio was really worth it.
all the same, i might get something just to fill the card slot, instead of having the little plastic piece. :) ..hope that's helpful, but if you have questions, post 'em as always! :)
(oh and p.s. perchik - i'm pretty sure that as our highest rated user, you should really be think about getting a custom avatar.. :) even if you're hot on the jellyfish thing.. you should create a custom jellyfish avatar that is perchik-unique. ;)
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| asked August 8th, 2007
| 10 responses
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