2-Port USB 2.0 PCMCIA Cardbus PC Card (fully inside for Notebook)

by AKE

Product Details

• Item Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• ASIN: B0027Q4HXG
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (105 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,423 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 26, 2009

Product Description

Are you still agonising the bulge of your PCMCIA cardbus?Take a look at our newest built-in stype USB2.0 cardbus.Super slim hidden desgin, NEC chipset, VISTA compliant PCMCIA To USB Card.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great low cost solution for both XP & Windows 7, July 7, 2009

By 

RichG NYC "RichG NYC" (NYC) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: 2-Port USB 2.0 PCMCIA Cardbus PC Card (fully inside for Notebook) (Electronics)

If you need USB 2.0 connectivity for an old laptop this is the ideal solution. I highly recommend it.
I had an older 4 port card that finally died after a few years of ownership & thought I'd give this one a try because of the low cost & small profile.

My first concern was how they were going to fit 2 full size USB ports in this size card. It's close, but they did it. Perfect!
The nice value add is that this card does not protrude out of the laptop so you can leave it in when you carry the laptop in a briefcase or backpack.

My second concern was compatibility. I have an older laptop, Dell Inspiron 8600 with 1.6GHz Intel processor & 1GB RAM. I run Windows XP on my primary active partition & am testing Windows 7 Release Candidate on a second partition (running perfectly for a month now)
This card was recognized & installed immediately in BOTH OPERATING SYSTEMS WITHOUT THE DRIVER DISK! Perfect!

My third concern was power. The image above doesn't show that the card is powered from one of your built in ports. This is really important as most of these cards can't support the high power drain of cellphones, cameras & other devices that require power from the port. This card is powered with a supplied cable. Perfect 3 for 3 so far!

Now look at the price... looks like a 4 for 4 to me.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Buy, Lousy Manual, August 13, 2009

By 

G. Troutman (Winston-Salem, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: 2-Port USB 2.0 PCMCIA Cardbus PC Card (fully inside for Notebook) (Electronics)

Needed USB 2.0 ports for a 2002 model laptop, and needed a PCMCIA card unit without a huge external protrusion. This unit fits flush into the cardbus slot and yet provides two USB 2.0 ports. At first the unit wouldn't work properly (laptop freezing on shutdown) with my old laptop and Windows 7 RC (it's my test PC) and I intended to return the unit. The manual provided on the mini-CD is the archetype for poorly written, unintelligibly illustrated driver installation instructions and nowhere indicates to the user the need to install the included driver for proper operation. One would assume the standard Windows USB drivers would suffice based on the lack of other direction, plus the installation itself seems to be installing the same Windows driver again. HOWEVER - I took a chance and installed the OWC driver and - voila! - the card operates perfectly. External hard drive, digital camera, WiFi dongle - so far I haven't thrown anything at it the card can't handle. And the laptop shuts down properly again.

This card is well worth the money, but the documentation kills a star.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simple, Easy to use, and Dirt Cheap!!, July 26, 2011

By 

sweetwolfe - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: 2-Port USB 2.0 PCMCIA Cardbus PC Card (fully inside for Notebook) (Electronics)

I have an old Compaq laptop computer with two old USB 1.1 ports (ports are molded/framed into laptop case and not easily removable). I have quite a few USB 2.0 devices (Digital Camera, USB Flash Drives, USB 1TB Western Digital Hard Drive, Webcam, Wireless adapter, etc) that I use on my desktop computer which has USB 2.0 ports. I notice a large decrease in data transfer speed when using these same devices on my laptop with the USB 1.1 ports. So I've been wanting to upgrade my laptop to USB 2.0 ports for a while. My laptop had the type II/type III expansion bay open (unused), so after doing some research here on Amazon and reading many positive reviews here on Amazon, I decided to purchase this product to insert into the expansion bay of my laptop.

I'm very happy with this product. Reasons:
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-DIRT CHEAP here at Amazon.

-Truly does fit all the way in my Type II bay and is flush with the end of the bay, so looks good.

-Was very easy to install. I'm running Windows XP with Service Pack 3. Figured I'd try my luck and let Windows choose the drivers for this device (I NEVER installed the drivers that came on the included Driver CD). With my laptop powered off, I simply inserted the card into my type II port, then powered on my laptop. Windows immediately found the new card, automatically installed all the drivers ("Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller" and also "NEC PCI to USB Host Controller"), and told me my device was ready to use. That simple!! And I tried one of my USB Flash Drives and PRESTO! - it worked perfectly and at USB 2.0 speed!!
Couldn't believe it installed that clean and easy!!

Included in package from Amazon:
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-Laptop Card

-Driver "Setup Software" mini-CD. (Note: I never installed these drivers and my laptop card works perfectly).

-Cable. One end of this cable inserts into a slave USB port (in my case an old USB 1.1 port) and the other end inserts into the middle of the Laptop card (between the two USB 2.0 ports). Please note the cable is approx 30 inches (approx 76 cm) long, measured from tip to tip. This was *plenty* long enough for my laptop setup. Cable not needed (does not have to be connected) unless you're using your laptop card to power certain high-drain USB devices. Card worked fine (provided enough power) stand-alone to simultaneously run two (2) USB Flash Drives just fine. Cable was NOT connected when I did this setup and everything worked well.

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I've uploaded (to Amazon) three pictures I took of this product. Please see these pictures, in case they're helpful to you.

Again, i'm very happy with this product and I highly recommend it!