Firewire

Wig

Do people still use firewire? Obviously there may be some with old bits of kit that use it, but are there new gadgets sold as new today that use firewire to the general public (i.e. not including obscure specialised industry).

I ask because Makro had a bargain basement bin, with various bits and bobs reduced to 50p - £1. There was a 4x4 firewire cable 2m, not priced. I asked them to price it thinking I would buy it if it was 50p. (I just wanted it for DIY purposes, I was going to convert it to something else).

Eventually he said £7.99 :eek:

So Makro still have that old bit of firewire.
both ends looked like this

weegie.geek

Lost of things still use firewire. DV cameras for one. That won't be changing any time soon.

tankard_2

That's one example.
How many others are there.
Not many, I bet.

I have always chosen firewire over usb but it seems I am in the minority.
Who uses firewire..??

superscaper

tankard wrote: »

I have always chosen firewire over usb but it seems I am in the minority.
Who uses firewire..??

I do. For my external hard drive (WD MyBook), only got it at Xmas so quite new, and has USB and Firewire. I connect by firewire because firewire sustains large file transfer whereas USB is better for high speed burst transfer. So if I'm backing up my entire PC then firewire is the faster option. Same reason it's used so much in DV (as weegie.geek pointed out), transferring video etc needs long sustain high speed.

weegie.geek

tankard wrote: »

That's one example.
How many others are there.
Not many, I bet.

I have always chosen firewire over usb but it seems I am in the minority.
Who uses firewire..??

How many examples do you need?

Anyway, it's not an either/or thing, you can have connectivity for both in your PC.

My point is that it's not outdated technology, just specialist. Most people won't need firewire. People with decent SD video cameras that don't record in MPEG2 are much better using DV.

colin79666

I still use firewire because Macs won't boot from a USB drive

weegie.geek

30111987 wrote: »

I still use firewire because Macs won't boot from a USB drive

A quick google suggests otherwise, for both PPC and x86 based macs.

isofa

I use FireWire all the time on both PC and Mac, I have external drive (MyBooks) connected via FireWire on both, and on the Mac FireWire 400 offers a faster transfer rate than USB 2, and on many PCs too.

Connecting DV camcorders up to computers via FireWire is a standard too, although some now use USB 2 (as per posts above).

It's certainly not an outdated technology, new Macs now sport FireWire 800, twice as fast as the older FireWire 400 interface, which is much faster than USB2

Movie and music users use this speed all the time for video and multi-track production, where USB just can't keep up - again especially on the Mac side.

rubiales

Can a firewire port (in a Sony Vaio laptop) be repaired/replaced easily (and cheaply) if it has stopped working?

Laptop not in warranty so can't send it back for repair.

Leopard

Wig wrote: »

Do people still use firewire? Obviously there may be some with old bits of kit that use it, but are there new gadgets sold as new today that use firewire to the general public (i.e. not including obscure specialised industry).

I ask because Makro had a bargain basement bin, with various bits and bobs reduced to 50p - £1. There was a 4x4 firewire cable 2m, not priced. I asked them to price it thinking I would buy it if it was 50p. (I just wanted it for DIY purposes, I was going to convert it to something else).

Eventually he said £7.99 :eek:

So Makro still have that old bit of firewire.

Is this some sort of joke?

All Apple Macs for the last ten years have had Firewire 400 as standard and for the last five years the higher end Macs have had Firewire 800 as well.

Firewire is the preferred system of choice for everyone who uses a Mac.

Firewire 400 is faster than USB2 in practice and Firewire 800 is (almost) twice as fast.

I use Firewire, both 400 and 800, all the time.

Firewire devices can be daisy-chained; USB devices can't.

Portable devices can usually run off the power carried by Firewire without an external power supply unit. USB devices mostly can't.

Firewire is brilliant. :T

30111987 wrote: »

I still use firewire because Macs won't boot from a USB drive

Macs do boot from a USB2 drive. All mine can.

It's "Target Mode" you can't use with USB.

weegie.geek

rubiales wrote: »

Can a firewire port (in a Sony Vaio laptop) be repaired/replaced easily (and cheaply) if it has stopped working?

Laptop not in warranty so can't send it back for repair.

Depends what's wrong with it. If it's had a bump it might just be a case of opening the laptop and re-soldering the connector back on, or soldering on a new one.

Probably less risky and definitely easier to just buy a pcmcia/cardbus/whatever firewire card.