Firewire 800

[optijaz]

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to hear people's opinion of fw800 on new macs. I just found out that it's a different shaped plug then regular firewre. I don't think that's so great an idea cause no backwards compatibility like usb2 which now seems so much more attractive. I realise that Apple likes to make things simple with each device having it's own connection but what do people think?
Also what do you expect some new hardware to be for the firewire 800 ports?

Cheers

 

[vniow]

Re: Firewire 800

Originally posted by optijaz
I just found out that it's a different shaped plug then regular firewre. I don't think that's so great an idea cause no backwards compatibility like usb2 which now seems so much more attractive.

Actually FW800 is backwards compatible with FW400, you just need an adapter for it.

 

[rainman::|:|]

Yep, it's backwards compatable.

The only thing that *should* come out for FW800 right now is RAIDs, because those are the only things that can possibly take advantage of the bandwidth. But you'll probably see a line of higher-priced harddrives, maybe broadband modems, DV camcorders, all kinds of pointless goodies. Don't waste your money on the FW800 connection, it's not going to be faster for these items.

And there won't be a FW800 iPod until they can manufacture a HDD that goes faster than FW400.

pnw

 

[Bear]

Actually a reason for slow devices to have a FW800 interface is to allow them to be attached to a chain of FW800 devices without slowing down the other devices.

For the near future I can see machines coming with both FW400 & FW300 ports, but somewhere in the future, they might want to drop the FW400 port.

 

[rainman::|:|]

Originally posted by Bear
Actually a reason for slow devices to have a FW800 interface is to allow them to be attached to a chain of FW800 devices without slowing down the other devices.

For the near future I can see machines coming with both FW400 & FW300 ports, but somewhere in the future, they might want to drop the FW400 port.

That's true, but you'd need either a very large chain, or a small chain of constant high-speed devices. I definitely think FW800 will be important in the near future, but i just don't see the point in the average consumer flocking to adopt it quickly... Some pro users can take advantage of it now, and consumers will be able to take advantage within the next few years... so there's no need to revise the iMac for the sole purpose of adding it

pnw