How often do you use Firewire?

With all the fuss about apple removing firewire from its Macbook line, dropping support in the ipod/iphone's. I was wondering just how many people out there actually use it?
I used to use it alot years ago, before USB2 was standard, but I can't remember ever using in on my current mb once.
So how often do you use it?

 

There was no option :"I used it once in my life ". It is pointless .

 

I personally think that is a good move, USB is becoming more and more standard, with faster (and faster) connection speed and flexibility with other hardware (camera, external drives etc ...)

How often i use(d) firewire? The last time was years ago.

cheers ...

 

qhn, i guess its just me being nitpicky, but usb 2.0 spec hasnt changed over the years. Although the devices that use it, have become faster over time.

I personally havn't used firewire that often. I use it for school, because they require us to use firewire drives for video editing (i think theyre just covering themselves for what we do, although there is a difference).

Firewire is pretty much phased out now in consumer life. I think most consumers used firewire with DV camcorders, but now most of the cameras that are being made are flash/hdd based, and just use usb to transfer their files.

Even apples own ipods, dont use firewire anymore.

Where firewire does exist though, is in the video production/film/audio field. Cameras, tape decks, audio mixers, and other stuff all have firewire connections, and in a lot of cases, ONLY have firewire connections. If apple had kept their new macbooks with a firewire connection, they could have made really good mobile laptops for offloading footage from p2 cards, and handle editing decently. But they cant, kinda sucks, considering that many people consider macs to be "artsy" and yet, we the people of the media cant use them for what wed like to.

Although, looking ahead, I dont see firewire 400 staying alive in the consumer market for much longer (its practically dead right now). Even with firewire 800, its pretty much a small market of editors and other professional users. Most consumers will just use a usb 2.0 drive, and not bother getting a firewire, because they ARE more expensive.

Its kinda like the format wars, FW vs USB, and usb won(for various reasons). Even though FW was the better format (technically/speed), it lost the war.

Although, one of the great features about macs, is that you can the laptop as an external drive by using the firewire connection. This saved me a LOT of times when i needed to tranfser large amounts of data from my laptop to another mac/mac pro. Alot easier then having to copy it to an external device, and then copy it from that to the target computer.
Also it saved me, because if my video card dies, i can still connect my mac to another one to back it up/grab files from it. Without having to open it up and take out the hdd.

So yea, I think it was pretty much a bashing point, that people use against apple/ the new macbooks. Apple should have included it, but it is a dieing format for consumers, and they didnt have much space, so i guess they just didnt.

Also it makes people who were looking at buying a macbook but needed firewire, have to get a macbook pro ;p
[edit]oh thats a long post, sorry for the grammar/spelling im not reading it over[/edit]

 

Ive used it once in my life, my old Camcorder supported Firewire and Usb, i tried out both but usb seemed a better choice

 

never lol

 

Anytime my MBP is on the desk.

My Time Machine drive is a FW800 drive and I also store video files and games for my boot camp partition on an external FW800 drive. FW is simply superior to USB.

FW has traditionally had better Mac support and a lot of Mac compatible hardware still use FW. Audio interfaces are a great example. It's the superior format in every way (availability aside) so as long as it's around I don't see why Apple should remove it.

FW400 was getting a bit old and irrelevant but then the MacBooks should have been upgraded to 800. I think it's a marketing decision more than anything.

 

I've never used it in my life
What's firewire? it sounds dangerous... fire and laptops shouldn't mix
LOL I picked that.

 

I use firewire 800 every day with my external hard drive. Even with just firewire 400, the transfer speeds are a lot better than USB 2.0.

 

Point well taken, I was only stating that more devices are adopting USB interface as the norm.

This is one area that I miss, since I must use Windows and OS X mixed. Some Windows machines we have are just not "friendly" with Firewire interface.

cheers ...

 

Never even seen a device with a firewire port.

 

Only with my (now dead) 3rd generation iPod.

edit: There should be an option that says, "Once last year". That would be my vote.

 

Lol at the last option on the poll.

 

Regularly, at least once a month, sometimes more - I have a project due in Communications Systems soon so I'll be using it even more.

I'm just a high school student, but I'm an avid video editor, so I see Firewire a lot. That's the only reason I'm practically begging for a Macbook Pro rather than a regular Macbook.

Right now, I'm just getting editing done on my A642 3800+ (@250x10) with 2GB. Sadly a desktop, but I hope to get that f***ing MBP soon.

----------------
Now playing: David Arnold - The President's Speech
via FoxyTunes

 

every day for all 3 of my external HDs.

The fact the MB doesnt have it anymore is no surprise to me. If you need it that bad, pony up the 300-500$ more and buy the Pro.

Ill be buying the pro probably, but only because the screen is nicer/bigger.

 

Firewire has quite a few advantages that make it better than USB2.0. One is that it's faster than USB2.0 even though USB2.0 is marketed as 480Mb/s while Firewire is "only" 400Mb/s. Just goes to show how gullible most consumers are to the raw number. Firewire also uses less CPU power as it has a dedicated chip to handle processing while USB relies on the CPU for control. Firewire also has networking capabilities and supports target disk mode on Macs.

The major benefit of Firewire to me is that it supplies significantly more power over the cable than USB. USB2.0 can only do 0.5A at 5V or 2.5W. Even some 2.5" mobile HDDs can't operate bus-powered in enclosures with that amount of power. Firewire on the other hand is 12V and doesn't have a defined current draw rating. On Apple notebooks Firewire can supply up to 7W (3 times USB2.0), while recent Mac Pros can actually provide 18W (7 times USB2.0). Things means virtually all external devices can be bus-powered with a single Firewire cable rather than relying on a 2nd USB cable or an external power supply for power support. I can't stand portable enclosures that aren't powered by a single cable since it really isn't portable if you have to carry around several cables or have to actually plug in an external power supply before use.

USB3.0 should solve some of these power issues since it's now rated at 0.9A and 5V or 4.5W. That should be sufficient for all 2.5" mobile HDDs, but won't be able to power 3.5" HDDs as Firewire can. Comparing USB3.0 to Firewire 3200, USB3.0 will require completely new cables to take advantage of the faster speed otherwise it'll fallback to USB2.0 on existing cables even if the devices and ports are USB3.0. Firewire 3200 works with existing Firewire 800 cables. Speed-wise, USB3.0's 4800Mb/s seems very impressive, but given Firewire 400 is faster than USB2.0, it wouldn't surprise me if Firewire 3200's 3200Mb/s is still competitive. Comparing USB3.0 to USB2.0, USB3.0 actually isn't 10 times faster since USB3.0 seems to use a new 8B10B scheme where for every 10bits sent only 8bits is actually data, so USB3.0's theoretical advantage over USB2.0 is only 8 times. Firewire 800 already uses a 8B10B scheme and that will carry over to Firewire 3200.

 

I personally would not disagree on the benefits and the performance of Firewire over USB.

As laptop prices are being depressed and competitive, it only makes sense for laptop manufacturers to realign their models, or to diversify them, into dedicated segments. Apple is only making a strategic decision of dropping the support of Firewire on certain models, in order to stay competitive and gaining market shares.

cheers ...

 

consider you all priveleged to have fw400 on the mb for this long

 

Never used anything related to FireWire and nothing has ever been into my whitebook's firewire port... Ever...

 

Never......

 

With over 60% of us nerds rarely using Firewire it looks like its starting to become clear why apple felt it could safely drop it from the mb.
I'm guessing there internal survey's showed that more than 90% of average consumers never used the port.
Regardless of firewire's tech advantages over usb, if no one is using it... it might as well not exist.
a

 

Firewire doesn't use CPU resources while operating, that's why I love an external HDD via firewire for applications.