laptop pci express cards?

[rdorman]

i just found i have a spare pci-e mini port inside my laptop, and was wondering what interesting cards i can put in there?

i have all the basics, wireless n, bluetooth, big hdd, so im looking for something.. different maybe like a tv tuner, or something like that.

what have you guys found that goes in a pci-e mini slot?

[scottath]

Wouldn't be able to put a tuner card in as there is no place to connect the aerial.
Usually only wireless cards that i've seen - though i had one laptop at work that had flash memory in it [for pagefile/extra ram i suppose]

[AMD2400]

i too found a pci-e slot in my laptop.

Some cards you can get are pci-wwan cards, which are basically wireless 3G radio's. My laptop has a sim card slot at the bottom all im missing is the actual radio.

Other then that its pretty limited. As Scottah mentioned, intel turbo memory?

nothing else really

[silver6]

It depends on what you notebook supports.

There are

WWAN cards
WiFi cards
Intel Turbo Memory
TV Tuner
SSD Cards

[scottath]

The laptop i had at work was probably the Intel memory chip as the laptop was one of the Asus gaming series

[rdorman]

hmm, a wwan card would be nice!

are there any cards that dont have contracts? i would rather pay per month or get locked into a short term (3 months) contract, rather than have a 2 year contract if i find i dont use it.

also, my laptop is a dell vostro 1200, i have some inside photos at home but i cant remember if i saw extra antenna cables in there. i also cant see (or dont know what it looks like) a sim card slot under the battery. do i need this, or are there sim holders on the wwan card?

[AMD2400]

Well i have a Dell Latitude D620, not to sure bout the vostro, but i have a Sim card slot near where the primary battery goes, and also seperate WWAN antenna's, all that is missing is the WWAN module that goes into the pci-e slot.

The WWAN card compatible with it is the Dell 5520 WWAN card which is around $200AU, too steep for me, only paid 500 on the latop lol.

But im sure if you keep trawling around you might find a WWAN card with built in sim reader.

On plans,
I was considering getting the Voda $39 for 5GB plan or even the three's $15 1GB plan, dont know how long the contracts go for. Not touching telstra's plans. and im not sure about virgin's wireless service.

AMD2400.

[rdorman]

well, just checked laptop and it doesnt have a sim card reader. i could get a usb dongle or an expresscard dongle, but i want something to occupy that port, and the idea of having internet everywhere is good

is there a way of adding a sim card reader? i reckon i could mod a couple of antennas in if it doesnt have them, and the card would slip right in then, but i need to work out how i can connect a sim reader for the sim to work :P