I wrote a while back about new standards for external graphics cards on laptops – the basic idea being that you buy a fancy PCI card intended for PCs, drop it in an enclosure, and plug it into your laptop for desktop-level graphics capability. Gaming is of course the obvious market.
How time flies! Seems that MSI already has a product on the market, which plugs into the ExpressCard slot:
According to the ExpressCard web site, the ExpressCard channel will limit the performance that a PCI Express x16 card offers because it only operates on a single express channel at a data rate of 2.5Gbps. Still, being able to take a laptop on the road and returning home to play games by simply plugging it into an external video card may be tempting over the choice of buying a gaming desktop computer. Rock the Luxium with a 20″ monitor, a gaming mouse, and a desktop keyboard, and you’re good to frag without the expense of a high-performance desktop.
The thing even supports extra USB ports so it serves double duty as a USB hub for keyboard, mouse, etc. The desktop computer concept is increasingly obsolete.