I’ve been thinking a lot about sliming down the “stuff” in my life recently—for years, actually—and after having included some photos in the The Items We Carry flickr pool I decided I should start with the crap in my pockets.

I carry a wallet, keys, a pager for work, my cell phone, and my Newton MessagePad 2100 at all times and the most important things are really my Newton (which usually has atleast one PCMCIA slot free), my keys, and my IDs & credit card. I had remembered seeing a fake PCMCIA card years ago and was finally able to craft the correct google search terms to track it down: the Stash Card.

With such a product I could easily toss a few bucks and two keys (house & car) into it and carry just my Newton. I’d still have to figure something out for my IDs, but that wouldn’t be too bad. Since it was just under $8 (including shipping), I figured it was a worth a shot.

It came in on Monday and I immediately removed it from the packaging, opened it to see how much storage space it has (not much, but that’s what I was assuming), and then inserted it into the free PCMCIA slot in my Newton once it was closed tightly. However, upon trying to eject it, I discovered that it was completely stuck. I’m well aware that the Newtons were designed with very slim tolerances, but this was just too tight for even that to be the case.

So, after loosening the rear housing of my Newton I was able to safely extract the Stash Card with the assistance of a pair of needle-nosed pliers. Oddly, the Stash Card has two nubs/protrusions on either side that appear to be designed to cause friction to hold the card into a PCMCIA slot. I believe I could shave them off and it might help, but it’d still be too tight a fit.

My MacBook Pro has Express/34 slots not PCMCIA/CardBus slots, so I can’t test it there, but it does looks like it would fit better in a laptop (especially one with motorized eject mechanisms) than in the Newton, but I definitely would not suggest anyone buy the Stash Card for use in any Newton.

If anyone wants my Stash Card, you can have it for $6 (including shipping within the 48 contiguous States) and give it a try in a laptop.