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Remember PCMCIA? Now forget it ... USB-2.0 will take over

Within a year, you can expect to say good-bye to the PC Card - a business-card sized circuit board that plugs in the side of a PC notebook. Most wireless plug-in devices today use it. But future PCs will use a different technology.

And if you buy a new notebook PC in a year's time, chances are it won't even have a slot for PCMCIA-based PC Cards.

This is particularly good news for users of portable PDAs like the Compaq iPaq Pocket PC. The iPaq itself is neat, small and shiny; but before it can be used wirelessly, it has to be fitted with a "jacket" which will take a PC Card. This transforms the sleek executive toy into a nerd-brick, heavy, and power-hungry.

USB is the way to go for the future. But USB itself is changing. Currently it runs at only 12 megabits per second - nowhere near fast enough for tomorrow's networking applications.

There are, already, wireless WiFi devices based on the USB socket - for example, Buffalo has a product aimed at desktop users. Most desktop computers need to be opened up, taking the case off, in order to install a network card - wired or wireless - this one allows a new PC to be added to the office LAN by a user without a screwdriver.

But the future lies in mobile devices, not desktop; a glimpse of things to come can be seen in the 3Com Bluetooth USB add-in. It becomes an extension to the PC, not a device on the end of a cord. That sort of style will appeal to hand-held designers from phones to cameras, from printers to scanners. But 12 megabits per second isn't enough for them.

So PC Card is vanishing; and USB is seen as too slow. What will replace all these devices?

The answer is a new, higher speed version of the universal serial bus, or USB; USB 2.0 is already shipping, and will be standard by the end of the year. It runs 40 times the speed of the original USB, at a maximum of 480 megabits per second.

Users now face a bewildering choice.

Most modern notebooks have USB sockets. They also have PCMCIA standard cards. And they tend to have a third standard, too; the Compact Flash (CF) memory socket, much used in digital cameras.

Wireless devices need to be small, light, and power-miserly. So several makers of small pocket devices have opted for the CF format - examples would include HP's Jornada.

Speed is an issue, here. Few wireless devices, today, come close to stretching the capacity of standard USB, never mind PCMCIA; but new devices are close to market. In particular, the successor to WiFi, the new IEEE 802.11a standard, can already see throughputs of up to 100 megabits per second.

Most really high-speed devices have been looking to the standard known as FireWire - originally developed in conjunction with Apple.

The best known FireWire (IEEE 1394) products are digital camcorders, plus the recently announced Apple iPod music player. With USB 2.0, it becomes possible to match FireWire speeds.

Probably, Compact Flash will remain as a standard on notebook PCs, and on some hand-held devices. The ability to read camera memory is attractive to notebook designers. But it, too, uses the same electrical interface as the PCMCIA standard, and while it's small enough and neat enough to work on hand-helds, the USB concept will probably win out within a year, especially after cameras go wireless.

Later this year, FireWire will upgrade, too, almost doubling the speed of USB 2.0. When that happens, the old PC Card socket will be largely obsolete, except as a way of upgrading older computers. Most notebook PCs will have built-in dual or triple standard wireless; WiFi, 11a, and Bluetooth; and the few handhelds to use PCMCIA standards will drop them.