Laptops with PCMCIA slots

Barry, thanks for the list. I'm dusting off my old Dell Inspiron 700m for this also. Quick question: do you network the PC at home with your Mac Pro, and how? Can you actually use the PC as a reader directly ingesting to your Mac Pro? Or into FCP directly?
 
P2 To 15" inch Macbook pro

P2 To 15" inch Macbook pro

Not sure if you ever got an answer to this question but I have the same...Need to use P2 with my newest MacBook Pro and am looking for the most cost effective and fastest solution. Did you end up with this CardBus Reader? I have the 15" laptop which doesn't have the expresscard slot.
 
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If you want to offload to one of those MBPs, you're pretty limited in your options. If you want it done cheap, use the camera via USB. If you want it done without using the camera, get a PCD20.

Truth be told, the new 15" and 13" MBPs are about the worst laptops for offloading SxS or P2 or CF footage in the field. I'd say that if you want a cost-effective and very fast solution, forget using the MBP and instead pick up a Lenovo S10 and Addonics cardbus solution, as outlined by Jason Adams. That'll set you back less than $400 and will be way faster and much less expensive than trying to configure a way to make that MBP work.

You could connect the Lenovo to the MBP via ethernet to transfer the files when it's time to edit them, or just have the Lenovo transfer directly to an external USB drive, which you could plug into the MBP for editing.
 
Looking for light weight upgradable laptop

Looking for light weight upgradable laptop

I have spent the better part of today hunting down an approx 3-3.5 pound laptop with PCMCIA or Express Card AND is upgradable to bigger SATA II hard drive AND has superior battery life for backpacking in for 2 days AND has firewire AND can do Gigabit lan per Barry's article. Any suggestions?

If only it was easy to enter a set of requirements like this and have the solution set appear like on some car sites. I am now going down the list and looking them up until I find out that so far all are way too heavy.

Two more items for the list ASUS N10J series. They crap out for me on bad battery life. $600-800 at newegg.com
 
One more thing, I have found that the Hitachi Travelstar hard drives seem to have the best power performance by as much as 30%
 
Lenovo R400, it's a little heavier than you specify but it has both PCMCIA and ExpressCard, is upgradeable to whatever hard drive you want, plus it has the firewire port, you can get probably four hours out of its battery and you can put an additional battery in the UltraBay to bring it up to about six hours, and it has gigabit ethernet. And it starts at $679. And you can usually find coupons to get 10% to 15% off of that.

Fujitsu Lifebooks, I just spot-checked some; the S6421 has a SATA drive, firewire, PCMCIA slot, weighs about 4 pounds, 4hr battery life, gigabit ethernet.
 
Found more lifebooks; check out the P1630: it's barely over 2 pounds! Has the PCMCIA slot, SATA drive, about 2.5 hours battery life with an optional battery that'll give you 6 hours, and gigabit ethernet. Doesn't have firewire, but you could pick up a cheap PCMCIA->Firewire card for that.

Lifebook P8020: 6.2 hours of battery life, under 3 pounds, SATA internal drive, Gigabit ethernet, PCMCIA slot, and firewire port. Sounds pretty much like exactly what you're looking for.
 
Thanks very much. I will check those out. Before making a final choice.

Since I posted, I had found the whole lifebook series and kind of settled on the T2020, P8020 or T2010 - now looking for cheap.

If I get a chance, I will update the list with approximate weights wherever I know and post.

Also, I'm really enjoying the HPX book that came with my 170. Thanks
 
Im not used to buying these types of PCs

there are alot of sub numbers that are not mentioned in this thread making me a bit uneasy to buy.. + dont seem to be able to configure on alot of the websites who sell these things.

e.g

Lenovo ThinkPad R400 7443
Lenovo ThinkPad R400 7438
Lenovo ThinkPad R400 7439

what i would like is the one that has EVERYTHING...I don't care about price or battery life.


SATA
PCMCIA
ExpressCard
SD Slot for AVCHD
Firewire
Min 2 GB RAM
17" HD rez (if possible)
7200 HDD
Low Fan Noise


Is this too much to ask?
 
A Lenovo T500 would get you close to that; only thing would be the display, it'd be a 15.4" at 1680x1050, but it has everything else you're looking at. Buy it direct at www.lenovo.com and you can forget about the numbers and just configure it the way you want.

A Lenovo W500 would get you even closer, it still has a 15.4" display but you can get it in 1920x1080. So it hits every item on your list, except that the screen isn't 17".

Now, if you want 17", you can get a W700 or even the massive W700DS, which has two screens, a 17" 1920x1200 main screen and a slide-out secondary display that's 10.6", 768x1280. And it's a quad-core system. But no PCMCIA slot; it has two ExpressCard slots instead. You could get an Addonics adapter and leave it stuck in one of the ExpressCard slots, I guess.
 
Thanks Barry

Not sure you know, but to clarify, can you get any Lenovo quad core with the PCMCIA?
 
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Not yet, not that I know of. Closest you can get is the W700 with the two ExpressCard slots and an Addonics ExpressCard->PCMCIA adapter.
 
got ya...i guess i will go xp 32 for now


here is what i got for 2k

1 SYS.4058CT CONFIGURED SYSTEM $1,827.20 $1,827.20
The above product code consists of the following component(s):
1 4058CTO THINKPAD W500 EXPRESS 1 YEAR DEPOT WARRANTY $1,827.20
1 44C6209 SBB I.CR2DUO PR T9900(3.06GHZ $0.00
1 43Y4471 VBB GEN WIND. XP PROFESS. $0.00
1 43Y3435 SBB MW XP PROF US ENGL $0.00
1 44C1925 SBB 15.4 WUXGA TFT $0.00
1 44C1922 SBB ATIMBLITYFGLV5700W/512VR $0.00
1 42X6309 VBB 4GBPC3-8500 1067MHZ2DIMM $0.00
1 42X6355 SBB KYB US ENGLISH $0.00
1 44C1926 SBBULTRA NAV(TR.POINT+TOUCHPAD $0.00
1 44C1917 VBB INTEGRATED CAMERA $0.00
1 44C7423 SBB 128GB SOLIDSTATE DRV,SATA $0.00
1 44C1931 SBB DVD REC8XMAXDUL.ULT.S.SATA $0.00
1 42X6310 VBB EXPR.CARD SLOT/PCCARDSLOT $0.00
1 42X6325 SBB INT.WIFI LINK5300 $0.00
1 44C1928 SBB INTWIRELESSWIDEAR.NETW.UPG $0.00
1 41W1508 SBB 6 CELL LI-ION BATTERY $0.00



kind of a bummer i could not get the quad core just because they are phasing out pcmcia!!!

as well, I could have gotten close to the eqiv mac book pro for 1600 but again, the I/O issue (plus bootcamp doesnt do all i want it to)

anyway...this seems like it will be a good machine
 
JWinter said:
as well, I could have gotten close to the eqiv mac book pro for 1600 but again, the I/O issue (plus bootcamp doesnt do all i want it to)
Click to expand...
How? The equivalent macbook pro would be $2600 (15" with 3.06GHz processor), and doesn't do several of the things on your list! No firewire400 (although you could use an adapter), no ExpressCard, no PCMCIA, no 17" display... sounds like it wouldn't really do anything that you wanted.

If you went with the 17", then you could get at least the expresscard slot and the 17" HD display, but you lose the SD slot and now it's up to $2800...
 
right...devils in the details on the mac...thats why i emailed apple telling them they just lost another sale! (as if they care). I recently had a panny rep tell me apple makes all there money on iphones so the workstation laptops are leaning more and more towards consumer and mobility features. im still a believer in the macpro though....just so well made...

i just went ahead with the 15" HD display which should be awesome
 
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