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I've been using a lot such Widi SDIO cas back in he PalmOS days (on Palm Tungsten T3, and on Tapwave Zodiac 2).
Regarding SDIO bus: yes, it's still quite useful on some embed plaforms (in addition to soldered, think also about Arduino-class hardware. SDIO bus is much simpler to implement than a USB bus).
Regarding laptops: don't set your hopes too high. You still need a SD card port that supports SDIO (not even all ports on PDA supported it back then. eg.: Only one of the 2 SD ports on the Zodiac did), and the speed won't be that high.
Regarding size: Yes, all the SDIO cards I've seen back then did feature a huge external antena sicking out of the SD slots (and even some featured an antena connector hidden under the label to connect to an even bigger separate antena). So it won't be that muh smaller than an USB Wifi Dongle, but at least te signal IS good.
Regarding SDIO bus: yes, it's still quite useful on some embed plaforms (in addition to soldered, think also about Arduino-class hardware. SDIO bus is much simpler to implement than a USB bus).
Regarding laptops: don't set your hopes too high. You still need a SD card port that supports SDIO (not even all ports on PDA supported it back then. eg.: Only one of the 2 SD ports on the Zodiac did), and the speed won't be that high.
Regarding size: Yes, all the SDIO cards I've seen back then did feature a huge external antena sicking out of the SD slots (and even some featured an antena connector hidden under the label to connect to an even bigger separate antena). So it won't be that muh smaller than an USB Wifi Dongle, but at least te signal IS good.