I’ve had this Lenovo T61 laptop for two years and never figured out what all of the different ports are. The info that came with the computer was limited to pretty much “plug it in”. Now that some time has passed, there are YouTube videos explaining different aspects of the thing, and I’m intrigued by the two “express card” slots on one side. I know there are a myriad of things that can be plugged into these, but some are a mystery to me, particularly those related to memory.
So what would I be best served by regarding these? I know that some things will be dependent on what I do most, and I’ve thought about a card reader for one application. Any suggestions are appreciated.
I have an ExpressCard sound card for my work laptop, since the built-in sound doesn’t have a proper line-in jack.
ETA: ExpressCard is the replacement for the older PCMCIA/CardBus interface that laptops used to have. really, so much is integrated into PCs these days that ExpressCards are really only useful for stuff like high-end or niche applications like CANCards or adding new interfaces- say, putting a USB 3.0 card in a laptop that doesn’t already have it.
I found a memory card reader (no idea if that one’s any good, just an example) was very convenient on my T61. My new laptop has a builtin SD card reader, but the T61 did not. Much easier to keep the memory card reader in the laptop than to dig up cables for the camera every time I wanted to transfer a picture.
Another useful addition is an expresscard eSATA port. This will allow you to attach external hard disks, which support eSATA, to your laptop at a much high speed than your current USB ports will allow. Another option for external drives is a USB3 card, which will let you attach fast USB3 external drives to your laptop.
You could also add a gigabit ethernet card, but the T61 already has a gigabit ethernet port, so unless you need a second one, that would be a bit silly.
Is there anything you can install that will increase the performance of your laptop? Probably not, but it depends on how you use your laptop. If you currently use an external USB drive, then the eSATA or USB3 card (with a compatible external drive) will greatly increase the speed of the external drive. The memory card reader adds convenience because it lives inside your laptop (in the card slot) unlike an external USB card reader.
Now, all of that is for the ExpressCard/54 slot on the side of the computer. There is also something internal to the computer called a miniPCIexpress slot. You have to take the keyboard and wrist rest off to get to those. One is probably populated with the wifi card, and the other may be empty, or have a cellular data card in it. You mentioned memory, and those internal miniPCIexpress slots occasionally used to be sold with flash memory cards in them that were used as a cache to speedup the hard drive. I don’t believe this is done anymore, because it would be better to just get an SSD (a flash-memory based hard drive).
Adding one of those memory things to an internal port is probably not worth considering. It’s unlikely it will work with any except the few that were originally available with the laptop.
echoreply: Thanks for the information. The USB interface might be something I could use. Otherwise it appears that there is probably not much advantage to using the port. Perhaps my T61 is a later version than the one you had, as there is a Smartcard slot included. The express slot actually has room for two applications.
Oops. My mistake on the Smartcard slot. That’s on my ASUS notebook. That said, there IS a slot in the front that is the same width as a smartcard. No idea what it’s for.
Just so you know, a Smart card is not the same thing as an SD Card. Smart cards on laptops are usually used by businesses as login cards. SD cards, on the other hand, store photos and such. Smart card slots should be about as wide as a credit card, whereas SD slots are about half that.