In article <4p4Ha.85950$hd6.2138@fed1read05>, Michael Frazier
<MLFrazierJr@aol.com> wrote:

> I thought Firewire was much slower than USB 2.0 ???
> 
> Can a balanced (read non-Macaholic) please enlighten us all on this?

I don't know where the idea of "much" slower would come from. As
pointed out the raw bit rates of the connection are 400Mb/s for
FireWire (1394a) and 480Mb/s for USB2, "much" doesn't seem to come into
that. Also the latest version of FireWire (1394b) adds 800Mb/s and
1.6Gb/s, but only the 800 version has been implimented yet.

Raw bit rates don't tell the whole story. FireWire people I know reckon
that about 35MB/s is what you'll get out of the fastest FireWire
devices. For USB, the transfer rates are limited by the host controller
implimentation. The current crop of controllers max out in the
20-24MB/s range. 

Currently FireWire is most probably the faster technology.

The next generation of USB host controller is promising to up the
transfer rates into the 35-40MB/s range. I've seen one manage 31MB/s,
which was limited by the hard drive it was attached to. That controller
should be able to manage 39MB/s with a faster device.

I don't know how fast a FireWire 800 device would be able to manage in
reality, presumably a little faster than the current version.

In Future FireWire will probably continue to be the faster technology.

All of these transfer rates are so much faster than the cf device in
the original question, its hardly worth worrying about.

-- 
Barry
Barry@netbox.com                       <http://www.netbox.com/barry>
                           ------
             (I should put something down here).