I’ve had my MacBook Pro for more than two years now, and I’ve never used the ExpressCard slot. Now that I think about it, that was pretty stupid, because I was makeshifting all kinds of ways to get stuff off of SD cards, ways to speedily backup my mp3s and so on, when I could be using cheap, efficient little plugs made exactly for those purposes. This excellent little article goes over a bunch of common and useful bits for that little 34mm slot. An eSATA slot? Hell yes. Since replacing the HDD in my laptop isn’t possible (or at least isn’t advisable), a little high-speed external is just the ticket — or would have been if I’d thought of it during the last couple years. Don’t make the same mistake I did, kids.
[image from Flickr]