What version of ExpressCard slot (or other ports) comes in a dv8t laptop?

Question

I have a 1 month old dv8t-1200.  My current question: is the ExpressCard slot that comes in the dv8 model line a version 1 or 2 of the ExpressCard standard?  I'm hoping to buy an ExpressCard pretty soon to provide a couple USB 3 ports, but if the slot is only version 1 (2.5 Gbps) then it won't be able to provide USB 3 speeds even if the card could do it.  Does anyone know (a) what version the dv8's slot is, and (b) is there anywhere on the HP site that provides this info?  I called tech support tonight and, although she tried to be helpful, the tech was clearly not supported by HP technical materials.  She was googling to figure out the answer.  And I was not at all convinced she knew what she was claiming (she never answered my repeated question of 'what site did you find that on?', so I finally said "thanks, good night" and figured I'd try to find the answer somewhere else.  Given that the laptop has only USB 2 and FW 400 (both significant disappointments), I'm guessing the answer to my question is ExpressCard version 1.  But I'm hoping someone knows better.  Else maybe I'll buy a card and try it out, to see what speeds I get.
Both before purchase and after, it's been difficult to find a straightforward listing of information on the HP site about what the specs are for things like this.  Does anyone know of a reliable source for the details that HP leaves out of the published specs for each model line?  Or am I missing some source of good information that they provide?
Thanks much!

Answer 1

Too bad no one else figured this out first.  I bought a 1 TB Western Digital Passport Essentials SE (USB 3.0) today along with an IOGear USB 3.0 ExpressCard.  When the Passport's plug is firmly seated in the EC and the EC is powered, the maximum sustained transfer rate I got was 38 MB/s (on big files, around 1GB) although 25 MB/s was more common.  On the eSATA/USB 2.0 port, the same drive and files got 15-17 MB/s.  
There are bound to be a number of speed losses along the way, but I didn't expect to see only 25% of the USB 2.0 max speed (60 MB/s).  But I hadn't done this speed test with one of my USB 2 drives before.
I think my earlier concern about the ExpressCard version was misplaced.  Since version 1's max speed is 2.5Gb/s or 312.5 MB/s that doesn't seem like the limiting factor here.  
I figure I'll be looking to replace my dv8t with something else, maybe from a manufacturer that more willingly tells me what it puts into the machine that I'm paying good money for, and what performance I can reasonably expect from it.  Of course, since I didn't try to find that out beforehand, shame on me, but I'd appreciate being offered such information rather than feeling afterward that I've been taken advantage of.  Especially since it's so hard to get such info from HP.
The IOGear USB 3.0 ExpressCard and Passport seem fine on first use.  However, since I presume the EC should be inserted before the drive is plugged into it, there's a bit of a challenge to push the USB 3.0 plug into the EC fully without causing the EC's spring to pop out the EC.  An alternative would be to plug the USB plug into the Passport as the last step.  That feels ok, but I'd rather have left that end of the cable engaged as long as I had the disk sitting on my desk.  It would also be nice if the EC gave some visual indication whether it's powered, just as confirmation.