Published on 03/ 5/2008
The ExpressCard standard has grown up and we will soon see version 2.0 in the market. What are some of the improvements one can expect from ExpressCard 2.0? For starters, the speed of the PCI Express bus has been doubled, which translates to a 2X bandwidth performance increase for modules from 2.5 Gbps to 5 Gbps (in theory, at least). ExpressCard 2.0 will look the same and shares the same size as version 1.0, and is fully backward's compatible. Basically, if you're dealing with a whole lot of bandwidth each day, ExpressCard 2.0 is the way to go - or at least that's what they want you to believe. Notebooks ought to be carrying ExpressCard 2.0 slots from 2010 onwards, so it is still a long while more to go.