The other day I received some wireless adapters through the post for testing. To my amazement, they were ExpressCards, the replacement for PCMCIA or PC Card. That's the standard for removable add-in cards in laptops. Incidentally, whether you call them PC Cards or PCMCIA is, it seems to me, entirely dependent on age. Whenever anybody over 45 demos something to me, they always seem to say PCMCIA. Whenever they're younger, it's PC Card all the way.

Anyway, back to ExpressCards. The latest Mac notebooks sport the new format, as well as a handful of PCs. But is anybody actually using the new format? I certainly don't see many manufacturers rushing to produce them. In fact, with the exception of TV tuner cards, most manufacturers are positively ignoring the format.

The fact the wireless ExpressCards I got through the post had to be stickered with words to the effect of 'only for notebooks with ExpressCard slots, don't buy this if you don't know what one is' only goes to serve my point.

You kind of get the feeling there is some chap sat in an office who is the ExpressCard promotion group. Poor guy.

If you use your ExpressCard slot, let me know, will you?