Introduction

Today we are going to to take a look at a notebook accessory from Rosewill, PCMCIA Express card. PCMCIA Express card is a PCI Express based USB 2.0 accessory. If your laptop has only two usb ports, it could be rather frustrating to plug your phone, camera, psp or whatever you may have in. Some people purchase external usb hubs to solve the issues, however the problem comes with attached wires and some hubs require additional power to operate. The PCMCIA Express card by Rosewill very well could be a solution for an additional. Lets take a closer look at the PCMCIA Express card and see what it can bring on to the table of notebook accessories.

About the Product

Following information is taken from the Rosewill website.

Features

• Chipset: NEC uPD720114
• Fully compliant with ExpressCard Specification 1.0
• ExpressCard/34 Form Factor Module
• Hot-swapping feature allows to connect or disconnect devices without powering down system
• Fully supports EHCI and OHCI Compliant standards
• Compliant with Universal Serial Bus specification revision 2.0
• Provides four external USB2.0 high speed port

Specifications

Now that we got basic information out of the way, lets take a closer look at PCMCIA & Express card.

Closer look

Box Front		Box Back

Rosewill PCMCIA & Express card comes in s a very small and very light box. As always Rosewill wants to make sure that the person who is looking at this items knows that this is an Rosewill item. The box is rather simple and really isn't much to look at however it does its purpose in advertising PCMCIA & Express card.

Features		Side Shot

On the back of the box, Rosewill has included a Features and Packaging contents. PCMCIA & Express card RC-611 is designed to transfer rates as fast as 480Mbps via USB 2.0.

Contents		Out of the box

The whole package consists of only the PCMCIA & Express card and instructional manual. The PCMCIA & Express card is rather small and very slim. The only part that s bulky is the USB connector on the end of it.

Back shot		4 USB ports

On the back and on the front of the PCMCIA & Express card there are some informational information about the unit. On the left side of the unit are 4 USB 2.0 ports.

PCMCIA Express card connector		Size comparison

On the right side there is a PCMCIA Express connector which plugs in in to your notebook. Please consult your notebook manual to see if it has an PCMCIA slot. Not all notebooks have PCMCIA slot so be careful before you buy this.

Installed		Ready to go

PCMCIA & Express card doesn't take much to install. Just like you every other PCMCIA cards. Again please refer to your notebook instructional manual on how to install. Now that we got the pictionary out of the way, lets take a look at the testing data.

Testing

ASUS F8 Series F8Sp-X1 Intel Core 2 Duo T5750(2.00GHz) 14" Wide XGA 3GB Memory 250GB HDD DVD Super Multi ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 + Eagle JBOD enclosure.

We have used a Eagle JBOD(just a bunch of drives) enclosure with two hard drives (Western Digital 500 and 400 Gb) inside to perform our testing. We have performed our standard test and here are the results.

HD Tach 8 Mb vs 32 Mb

While performing HD Tach benchmark we have gotten average reads of 33.3 MB/s with 8Mb benchmark and 32.0 MB/s with 32 Mb benchmark. Comparing this data to other USB 2.0 based enclosures is just a little bit under the maximum speed of USB 2.0.

Sandra Benchmarking

We have also performed Sandra Benchmark to see how well the drive index compares against other hard drives. While performing the benchmark we found out that the drive index is 26.54 MB/s Comparing this to some of the other drives on the chart is not too good but expected. Since this is a USB 2.0 adapter the maximum drive index we can get is about 39 MB/s.

Conclusion

If you are looking for a way to expand your USB 2.0 ports, this might be the way to do it. Most users look in the accessibility and ease of use out of the USB hubs and accessories. Rosewill PCMCIA & Express card does exactly that. It is rather small and could fit right in the smallest compartments of your notebook bag/case. What this unit lacks is the speed but if are looking for just a way to add on more usb port, you should consider this unit. One thing which i found very odd is that PCMCIA & Express card has a power plug connection on the side of it. No where in the instructions/documentations i found any information on why it is there. I know that some USB 2.0 devices require additional power, but why not include the power supply with PCMCIA & Express card? Overall i do think Rosewill PCMCIA & Express card deserves a strong 7/10.

Some pros we found:

Easy to use

Small and stylish

Some cons we found:

Performance could be better