Ah, this takes me back. My first WiFi card, used for Napster (or similar) and playing Quake in class via the schools brand new wifi. Or all the adapters for USB 2.0, CF and SD cards. And of course the iomega Clik! drive they gave away as a promo, including one clik "disc" (40MB ircc) - that stayed true to its name and started to produce the "click of death" only weeks after I got it. fun times!
It would be nice to still have this level of expandability on new laptops but then again, apart from retro projects I never really needed anything like it for a long while now, so I guess its understandable they dropped it.