I noticed that I never use the PCMCIA slots on the laptops I have had…. not sure why, I guess the equipment I need has always been built in. I have a new razr phone (which I highly recommend for guys who do not want to look like a handy man carrying a phone on their belt, they fit perfectly in your front pocket). I was think that since phones are getting smaller and smarter it would be cool to have your phone plug right into your PCMCIA slot on your laptop. I then thought…. what if the phone rings while in the PCMCIA slot? Well you could eject it which would be the equivalent of answering the phone, or, maybe a computer based smart phone would pop up and you could interact through the microphone and speakers on your laptop?
What would be some other advantages or disadvantages…? You wouldn’t have the cabling issues that palm users have with toting around a USB (or even uglier a serial) adapter. Do Macs have PCMCIA slots? (Not a big Mac fan so I wouldn’t know….or care). Maybe it could double as a wireless broadband card so you could connect in your car to the Internet? I would think that the Windows Mobile phones would have an advantage in that they could tie into the OS (file and contact syncs etc….) What if hard drives are small enough and large enough that they are in the phone itself and it has the OS for the laptop on it? When the phone is in the PCMCIA slot it is the laptop’s harddrive, when it is out there is some solid state media in the laptop that keeps it going and synced? Now that seems like a stretch.
I wonder if power would be an issue? I would think that if the laptop is plugged into the wall it could charge the phone and the laptop…. not bad. But what if it is unplugged? Would the phone run on its own battery and the laptop on its own? Maybe some of the power saving options in the processors now a days could be used to say, throttle down the cpu in the laptop so it can give some battery resources to the phone?
Okay, I have rambled enough.
