cblaisd

I like the PC-Card form factor better, but they range from $20-60 on eBay, while the USB dongles are $2 to $20.

ScottC

No demand for them and more expensive to make. But mostly no demand.

You could always get one of these:

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.11866

Nice and small...

cblaisd

Leave it to me to want something for which there is no demand

Nice find on the adapter. Ordered. And no silliness about shipping costs to here.

ScottC

Just be prepared to wait 2-3 weeks to get it. Dealextreme is cheap, but their shipping is a "tad slow"

I order crap from them twice a month, so every 2 weeks I've got something cool in the mail from them

cblaisd

Ordered April 3. Arrived today.

Steph3n

You actually waited this long? I'd probably have pulled my hair out and issued a chargeback already

ScottC

With Dealextreme it's common for it to take this long. When I order stuff I do so expecting delivery times of a month or more

cblaisd

Nah. ScottC has never steered me wrong on good geek stuff at the best price.

SJUAMMF

One of the reason is the number of pins in the connector. PCCard has 68 pins, CF has 50+ pins, SD has 9 pins and USB has only 4-6 pins. Original concept to make DRAM cheap was to reduce pin count by using the so called multiplexed address bus. Future memory may use serial address and data buses to reduce cost. The I2C chip to hold ID in many gadgets has only 8 pins and very cheap.

Since Bluetooth transmission is serial already, it doesn't lose performance by using a serial bus. I bought a CF card recently and it is rated for 35MB read and 12MB write while typical SD is 6MB read and write. So this CF flash card utilize the CF standard's parallel feature to gain some speed. Most CF flash cards are slightly more expensive than comparable SD cards.

kennycrudup

And also 'cause the PC-Card versions tend to have an OHCI USB adaptor to couple the BT part, which is usually- wait for it- USB internally.

Not if they want decent performance, they won't. It's far harder to get reliability at the speeds necessary to mux 800MHz+ worth of parallel data onto serial lines.