What good are smartcard readers for PCs

[Peter Gutmann]

"James A. Donald" <jamesd at echeque.com> writes:

>Increasingly however, we see smartcard interfaces sold for PCs. What for, I
>wonder?

Companies buy a few readers for their developers who write software to work
with the cards.  They may even roll out a few in pilots, and put out a stack of
press releases and print brochures advertising how hip they are for using smart
cards.  Eventually the clients discover how much of a bitch they are to work
with (installation problems/buggy drivers/incompatibilities/not having your
card when you need it/etc, not helped by the fact that smart card vendor after-
sales support is the most client-hostile of any PC hardware type I know of)
that users decide to live with software-only crypto until the smart card scene
is a bit more mature.

Given that n_users >> n_card_vendors, this situation can keep going for quite
some time.

Peter.