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There's no question that the credit card-sized add-on devices for portable computers are handy. These cards, which meet the PCMCIA specification, do many of the same tasks as their larger relatives, including acting as modems, Ethernet cards, disk adapters and even sound cards and CD-ROM controllers.
And lately, some of these cards have taken on multiple personalities. We looked at three such cards with two different capabilities: the ability to act as fax/modem cards and as Ethernet adapters.
These Ethernet-modem "combo" cards solve a couple of important problems for mobile computer users. By combining the functions of two cards into one device, they provide a single, integrated solution for communications, regardless of whether the user is in the office or on the road.
None of these three cards, however, installs easily and quickly, none works at its default settings (at least in our test environment), and, in general, the documentation and support for these products isn't as good as they should be.
The three cards we reviewed are Data Race Inc.'s WinMax PCMCIA Combo Card, Megahertz Corp.'s PCMCIA Ethernet-Modem and Xircom Inc.'s CreditCard Ethernet+Modem II. We reviewed these cards using a computer that has two Type II PCMCIA slots and includes CardWare from Ventura Micro Inc., Oxnard, Calif., to manage its PCMCIA card services.
Each of these Ethernet modems requires special connectors that let you attach cables to the phone jack and...