well, i got my $4 usb 2.0 card in the mail. looks like a brand new card to me. hopefully it works.

but i wanted to note that there was no extraneous packaging, just a pc card in a electrostatic shield in bubble wrap. that's another all around benefit, both in terms of cost (on both ends) and in terms of waste.

this could be done very efficiently if we were smarter about it.