“FireWire has two main strengths over USB. First, it’s got a much sexier name. Second, it’s much faster, even compared with the newer USB 2.0 spec, because FireWire’s architecture dedicates several express lanes purely for data. That’s one reason why most DV camcorders use FireWire rather than USB for downloading your raw footage onto the PC for editing. So while the brochures and boffins speak of FireWire being rated at 400Mbps and USB 2.0 at a zippier 480Mbps, our testing of an external drive showed that a 500MB file was copied from the drive to the PC in about 20 seconds via FireWire compared with 30 seconds on the ostensibly faster USB 2.0,” David Flynn writes for The Sydney Morning Herald.
“By way of comparison, it would take about 10 hours to shift the same 500MB file across USB 1.1. In typical one-upmanship, last year Apple announced FireWire 800, which bends the needle at twice the speed of the original FireWire,” Flynn writes. Full article here.
More info on Apple’s FireWire and FireWire 800 here.
