I did a rollout of USB smart cards. The use case had an average of 5 insertions per day, 225 days per year, 5 years. That number was well below what the mfg of the smart card and the laptop mfg said the USB connection would support.

For what it's worth the only time there was token damage was when people forgot to unplug and smacked the token into a door frame, bending the token connector.

YMMV.

That's hopeful. I'm almost certainly going to go with it eventually given that USB is truly universal across computers.

When you say connectors do you mean the shields, or the termination of the wires to the connector?

I've only had the shield break twice, and that was from my dropping a laptop with a stick inserted, and from me treading on another stick.

I've had loads of cables get broken where they join the connector. Maybe I'm just too rough.

That's the reason why I wanted a laptop with a cellular modem inside the case (these are getting harder to find by the way, no idea why). I don't want anything sticking out of the machine while I'm on the move and may have to use it. 99% of the time it is on my desk and plugged in but as soon as I start moving around with it I want it to be free from protrusions because it is only a matter of time before I bump it into something and that will most likely shear the connector straight of the motherboard. So I don't think you're too rough, laptops in transit are simply fragile.

I believe it was wires to the connector that was the problem. Good call.