jor@soda.csua.berkeley.edu (Jason O'Rourke) writes:

> Bruce Murphy  <pack-news@rattus.net> wrote:
> >CD writers, hard drives, and various other things should have never been
> >sold with USB interfaces. Fortunately, most of the people who bought them
> >have learned this important lesson.
> 
> I always avoided IDE burners too, and used SCSI, but eventually gave up
> on the myth as implemenations matured.  USB external devices, esp storage,
> makes a lot of sense as virtually every machine out there now has USB1 or 2
> ports.

And if they've got a SiS implementation, ports that don't actually
work. Read the documentation for your scanner if you don't believe me.

> >> PCs have bays for additional hard drives
> >> and so the need for high speed external storage is greatly reduced.
> >
> >This also is a myth. Unless you like gutting your machine to move
> >storage around, waiting an age for scanners, etc, there are lots of
> >things for which firewire is very useful.
> 
> My scanner doesn't have FW, predates its mass use by 6 months or a 
> year.  I'm not going to replace a perfectly good nikon scanner (IV) to
> get a bit more speed.  The only reason I'd get it is to do video.  

Actually the IV came out at the same time as the 4000 and 8000, both of
which had FW. (And which came with a FW card)

> >PC owners think that external hard drives aren't needed becuase they
> >don't have the opportunity to use them, thanks to IDE (spit).
> 
> I saw pull out IDE drive setups back in the early 90s, running about
> $40 per unit.  It's nothing new.

_external_. Not 'removeable'. The unterminated 40cm length bus on IDE is
really poorly designed (except to be tolerant for use by stupid people
I guess)

B>