Apple may have dumped ExpressCard from their new MacBook Pro models, but the PCMCIA are going ahead with the official release of ExpressCard Standard 2.0. With 2.0, transfer speeds are reportedly boosted by up to 10-times compared to ExpressCard 1.2 and there’s also support for SuperSpeed USB 3.0.

The up to 5Gbps bandwidth will make ExpressCard 2.0 even more useful for adding eSATA ports and high-speed storage like the latest breed of SSDs. PCMCIA also sees it being useful for streaming video and audio adapters. ExpressCard 2.0 is also backward-compatible with previous cards, so existing accessories will all work in the new sockets.

[Slashgear]