Uses for PC Cards

The PCMCIA Association, the agency that sets standards for PC Cards, has identified a long list of applications that use the PC Card standard, including:

• Ethernet adapters

• Analog-to-digital converters

• AM/FM radio tuners

• Bar code readers

• Biometrics cards

• Bluetooth adapters

• Cellular data (WWAN) interfaces

• Global Positioning System (GPS) cards

• Hard drives

• Game controller (joystick) interface cards

• Flash memory cards

• Memory module adapters

• Modem cards

• Parallel port interfaces

• SATA host adapters

• Serial port adapters

• SCSI adapters

• Security tokens

• Sound cards

• Analog and digital TV tuners

• USB adapters

• IEEE 1394 adapters

• Video (VGA) adapters

• Video capture/frame grabber cards

This list is far from complete. The PC Card specification is flexible enough to support many other even more specialized services and applications. Except for a few very early cards, you can safely expect just about any product on a PC Card to work with your laptop, as long as it fits into the socket.

However, many of the same products and services are also available with a USB interface that is often faster and less expensive than a PC Card. Because your laptop almost certainly has both a PC Card socket and at least one or two USB ports, you can use either one to add features and functions to the computer.