Engineers and scientists are discovering the convenience and cost savings the PCMCIA platform gives them. The interface with PCMCIA allows data acquisition in many diverse applications which otherwise would have required lugging around a full-blown desktop system and all the peripherals. The anticipated growth of PCMCIA to over 40 million installed ports by 1997 makes it almost a certainty that whatever ISA-bus data acquisition cards are available now will be available with a PCM-CIA interface.