Question about Expansion Slots

[maniacmusician]

I was looking at some laptops on System76's site. Right now, I'm going back and forth between the Darter and the Gazelle. One of the differences between the two that I found was this:


Darter:
Expansion: PCI Express Card Slot (34/54)

Gazelle
Expansion: PCMCIA 2.1 supports one Type II


What's the difference and which is better?

PS: I attached my little comparison of the two laptops as a .odt in case anyone was interested. The document shows the default options, and the customizations that I desired from the laptops, the resulting price, differences, etc. But the point of this thread is to answer the above question.

[K.Mandla]

Strange. The only thing Google shows are expansion cards for desktop machines that allow you to insert ExpressCards ... whatever those are. Is it some kind of adapter then? Maybe ... aha! Wikipedia FTW (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExpressCard)!


The major benefit of ExpressCard technology over the previous PCMCIA CardBus PC card is a dramatic increase in bandwidth, afforded by the fact that the ExpressCard has a direct connection to the system bus over a PCI Express x1 lane or USB 2.0, whereas CardBus utilizes an interface controller that only interfaces with PCI. The ExpressCard has a maximum throughput of 2.5 Gbit/s through PCI Express or 480 Mbit/s through USB 2.0 dedicated for each slot, versus CardBus's shared 1066 Mbit/s bandwidth.

[maniacmusician]

Ah, so the Darter's expansion slot is better...

Well....at this point, I am leaning more towards the Darter...