Stocking Stuffer Creates Handy Storage Space Inside Your Laptop

Just a short post to mention an ingenious little product that would make a perfect stocking stuffer, as CrunchGear notes. The $10 gizmo, called the StashCard, turns your dusty, cobweb-infested PC Card slot into a a secret storage unit.

The picture makes it pretty obvious how it works: It's just a PC Card shell with a flap on top. Inside you can stash memory cards, cash, keys, stamps, precious jewels, your wedding ring... just about anything that can fit inside a case that's just a couple of millimeters tall and the size of a credit card.

On the other hand, before you go shoving a wad of hundred dollar bills in there, remember that your laptop is hardly a safe place to keep anything important. Laptop theft is, by far, the world's costliest and most popular computer crime, so you might be better off treating the StashCard as a handy place to keep your change rather than a secret that remains hidden forever.

As for me, I'd love to get my hands on a StashCard for Christmas, but I'm running afoul of a different problem: The laptop I'm using now (a Dell Inspiron E1505) has a ridiculous ExpressCard slot (for which few peripherals exist) instead of good old PC Card. Who knew that simply being a big, wide hole in your notebook would become the PC Card's killer feature. I miss you, precious PC Card slot.