<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by mikel51:
Is it a laptop or a desktop? Laptops will use a PCMIA card, while desktops use PCI cards that require opening the computer. Still, both are easy. Also, you can get cards that have both Firewire and USB 2.0 ports.
PCMIA firewire cards for laptops do not provide power unless you use and external power supply.
BTW, the old USB 1 ports also work. Although the transfer rate is much slower than the firewire or USB 2.0, it is still close to the maximum disc speed of the IPOD. Thus, the newer ports are not as much faster as the number tend to indicate. The maximum speed that the IPOD drive can write to the disc is ~8M/sec, so the 400M/sec rate of firewire is largely wasted when copying songs to the IPOD. USB 1 ports are about the same speed as the IPOD hard drive.</font>
I think you're mixing bits and bytes there. I'm sure the max speed your quoting is 8 megabytes/sec. The 400 for FireWire is 400 megabits/sec. 400 megabits is 50 megabytes (divide by 8). Or, another way to look at it is the 8 megabyte maximum is 64 megabits/sec. USB 1 is only 12 megabits/sec (1.5 megabytes/sec), so there is an notable advantage to having USB 2 or FireWire. The transfer speed would be some 5x faster assuming that maximum is correct.
The iPod would be most at home with FireWire, assuming you get a card that can power the FireWire ports. If the FW port has power, the iPod can charge from the FW port as well as sync songs. This only works on a desktop though in your situation. One thing I don't think anyone mentioned is that USB 2 is not standard in the iPod box. You'll need to buy an extra dock cable for that. So in this situation I would think that tilts the balance in favor of FireWire. EDIT: Oops, Swise did mention this up above. Sorry.
[This message has been edited by CrazyOne (edited Dec 16, 2003).]