Wireless Internet Cards For Laptops - A Historical Approach
Laptops can be used to access the Internet, while on the move, through wireless Internet cards. Today, of course, such cards have given way to a better option in the form of external USB wireless modems attached to USB ports on the latest laptops. The latest trend in laptops is to do away with the PCMCIA slot. One of the uses of this slot in earlier laptops was to insert a laptop wireless Internet card for wireless Internet access.
Such cards were also known as wireless laptop PC cards, as the PCMCIA slot on which they were inserted followed the PC card standard devised by the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA).
The PCMCIA slot on laptops has now been replaced by the Express/54 slot on the latest laptops. To the best of my knowledge, till date, maybe only one notebook internal high speed wireless Internet card for insertion into the Express/54 slot of the latest laptops has been introduced in the market.
The Express/54 slot is available on the latest HP laptops at least. The Express/54 slot is backward compatible with the Express/34 slot, which is its precursor. This means that an Express/34 slot based wireless card for laptop will still work in the Express/54 slot. An Express/54 slot based laptop wireless network card will however not work in the Express/34 slot. Since the Express/34 slot quickly gave way to the Express/54 slot, not many wireless Internet cards were designed for the Express/34 slot. This is also one reason most laptop manufacturers did not include the Express/34 slot in laptops manufactured by them. Wireless Internet Cards inserted on the PCMCIA slot in earlier laptops were used to access the Internet through an antenna on the card. Today you can still find a number of these cards in the market. The irony is that although the PCMCIA based laptop wireless Internet cards are still available, they will find only users who want to replace their earlier PCMCIA cards which may have been damaged or are in non-working condition. This is due to the fact that the laptop design has changed in favor of the Express/54 slot, for which again almost no wireless laptop card is available. Wireless Internet cards for laptops from Verizon, Cingular, Dell, and Sprint are quite popular in the market. If you want to purchase any wireless Internet card, you can find out the nearest ISPs, which offer wireless Internet connectivity in your region. They may be able to bundle a card to you at a discount if you are ready to take their offer of wireless Internet access plan. Before selecting a specific one out of a long list of brands and models of wireless Internet cards for laptops for purchase, one needs to do comprehensive research on the actual capabilities of each one of them.
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