Is firewire a common connection?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Metspitzer
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Metspitzer

Everything my niece and nephew have are USB.
Is fire wire a thing that never happened or would it be good to still
have one?

I want to get some USB extensions for the front of the case.
 
In answer to the subject line... No, of course it is not a common
connection.
Everything my niece and nephew have are USB. Is fire wire a
thing that never happened
Yes.

or would it be good to still have one?
Click to expand...

No.

There are exceptions to everything. My most recent mainboard has
an unused firewire connection. Almost no one uses them. Everything
is USB at the store, because USB is what everyone uses. I
understand that might rub somebody the wrong way, but it is the
way it is.
I want to get some USB extensions for the front of the case.
Click to expand...

Some USB flash drives come with USB extensions, that is one way to
get them. It is not an immediate fix, but something to keep in
mind when choosing a USB flash drive. Corsair has been a good
example.
 
Metspitzer said:
Everything my niece and nephew have are USB.
Is fire wire a thing that never happened or would it be good to still
have one?

I want to get some USB extensions for the front of the case.
Click to expand...


Firewire is much more prevalent in the Mac world, but you do find it in
the PC world (several of my motherboards and laptops have a Firewire
port and several of my cases have front Firewire ports).

Also, I do have one external drive enclosure that has USB and Firewire
ports, but I looked for that combo specifically, because I kept hearing
that Firewire was faster than USB2 (from my testing, it is) and has
lower CPU utilization (it does that also, I think).

But, beyond my experimentation, and maybe having a drive that's more
easily compatible between a PC and a Mac, I haven't gone out looking for
Firewire anything.

JMHO...

Jim
 
Metspitzer said:
Everything my niece and nephew have are USB.
Is fire wire a thing that never happened or would it be good to still
have one?

I want to get some USB extensions for the front of the case.
Click to expand...

Some camcorders have Firewire connectors, and you can do
video transfer into the PC with it.

Firewire hard drive enclosures can be daisy chained, for whatever
that is worth. On USB, you use USB hubs to provide port expansion.

Firewire has a better protocol, but Firewire isn't winning the market.

Firewire supports networking between two computers. You can run a
Firewire cable from one computer to another, and set up a network.
USB doesn't support the direct connection, with a simple cable,
from one PC to another. There is a USB product, with a chip in the
middle of the cable, that allows connecting two PCs together, so
that product lessens the distinction between USB and Firewire.

I think Firewire networking, was removed from Vista. I don't know
what they did for Win7, but I'd expect the same policy there.

Firewire also has the distinction, of allowing a computer to
be hackable from the outside. Firewire supports remote DMA, from
one host to another. This info is of more use to police forensics
teams, than being an issue for home PC usage. If you were a software
developer, who needed a means of taking a snapshot of memory contents,
this might be a way to do it.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Secu...-Firewire-Hack-Actually-a-Feature-80850.shtml

Paul
 
Metspitzer said:
Everything my niece and nephew have are USB.
Is fire wire a thing that never happened or would it be good to still
have one?

I want to get some USB extensions for the front of the case.
Click to expand...

It was popular once because it was faster than USB. Apple and many
videocam mfgrs supported it.

It's still faster than USB2 (despite its slower theoretical bandwidth),
but its popularity has diminished as mini- and micro-USB plugs are
becoming more standardized.

Unless you already have Firewire devices, it shouldn't be a dealbreaker
on a new machine.
 
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