I ordered a MacBook Pro sight unseen (something I usually never do) and was disappointed to read that there was no FW800 or PCMCIA card slot. This helps that pill go down smoother.

i never understood why Apple included the PC Card slot in a powerbook to start with. I speak from a professional certified help desk stand point when I say that out of 98 laptops in a corportate environment, one uses the PC card slot for a WiFi card. Because they nere too cheap to get AirPort when they bought the Ti, that's the only reason. If they didn't have the PC card slot, we'd have gone USB G (Thank you RT2500 chipsets), but I guess I never saw what there was to love about PCMCIA. Always a pain, IMHO... glad it's gone. Put in a usable CompactFlash slot, embrace CF standards instead!

"but I guess I never saw what there was to love about PCMCIA. Always a pain, IMHO... glad it's gone. Put in a usable CompactFlash slot, embrace CF standards instead!"

What if your camera uses SD? No SD-CF adapters. Or uses MemoryStick? The PCMCIA is the most versitile - use a adapter for your memory cards.

Need more ports - buy a PCMCIA FW/USB/whatever card.

Need to have another LAN connection? Buy a lan card.

Need a wireless card for your cell connectivity? PCMCIA card.

There's many uses for them - even in the corporate setting, many use them for more than WiFi cards.....

I always use the PCMCIA card for transferring photos from my D200 - very fast, and easy.

I have two TiPBs and an iBook. Have never found a use for the PCMCIA slot. My digital cameras all use USB port. Don't need it for LAN because Ethernet is built-in and it has an Airport card.

About the only thing that comes to mind that you might need to use the PCMCIA port would be for an EDGE or EVDO card. However, with broadband becoming almost universally available at hotels and motels even the need for EVDO is limited and only necessary if your business needs demand that high speed wirelessly.

If you have a TiBook, like I do, your USB ports are limited to 1.1 speeds, slow as molasses. To get USB 2.0 on the TiBook, your only way was of getting a PCMCIA USB 2.0 card. Also, if you needed Airport Express, you couldn't buy an USB adapter for that on the TiBook, because USB 1.1 is too slow for that.

I agree that it was less useful on the Aluminum models which had all that already integrated.

IMHO pcmcia was never meant as a "you must use this right now" feature like Ethernet or USB but rather as a "this may help you to use new technologies as they become available". The operative word being 'may'. It adds little to the cost of the unit and can add a year or more to it's usuable life and can make reselling an old unit much easier if you add the $40 card that makes the unit 'almost' up to date. Meets my criteria for a good feature.

Cellular modem.

SCSI.

Ethernet (yes, you CAN use a laptop as a LAN router).

CF/SD/MMC card adapters (I have seen an SD-CF adapter in CompUSA, though).

GPS.

Small form factor hard drive.

You *can* use USB or firewire for many of these, but then you have a big easily-damaged dongle hanging off the side.

I only used mine with an adaptor for my camera's CF card. It gets the photos off & into iPhoto quicker, plus I can drag & drop movies off it instead of using Canon's clumsy software to do it.

I look forward to a similar adaptor for the ExpressCard slot.

I was going to buy that mouse that fits in the PC card slot to recharge (I don't need it--I'm just a gadget addict). Hopefully there'll be similar ExpressCard gadgets to waste my money on.

There's good reason why there's no PC card slot... the MBP is based on a PCI-express design. And since the PC card slot is really a mini PCI bus, it can't be included (and Apple clearly doesn't do dual-bus designs - take the recent G5 revisions... PCIe only). The ExpressCard slot will begin appearing more and more on PC laptops, too. Perhaps on a future 17" MBP, there will be room for the larger ExpressCard/52 (or is it 54) to accomodate larger cards, including on-card hard drives.