Why do notebook vendors stick by 4-pin Firewire?

I'm really disappointed about the lack of notebooks with 6-pin Firewire these days. Instead, every notebook I see sports the far more brittle 4-pin connector. The 6-pin connector is much more rugged and can also provide power to the connected devices if needed (which makes it great for external harddrives and audio cards). So why stick with the 4-pin connector? It can't be that much of a price/space issue, now can it?

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I agree!
But i think they never thought of the firewire would be used much with things that needs power like external drives. I think they thought more about making the use of firewire with digital (video) cameras and such.

And the fact that external drives usualy comes with external power there is really no need for the devices to be powered straight through the firewire port, as the batterytime will decrease pretty much with anything powered through it. And if you use an external hdd then you're probably almost using the notebook with the AC connected anyways.

Though there is 2.5" external HDD's that can be powered straight from the USB-ports if you really wanna have a portable HDD for your notebook. Almost any external 2.5" drive will work.

 

eSATA better

 

6 pin Firewire requires much more real-estate on the side of the computer. That coupled with the fact the Firewire is becoming obsolete makes it an afterthought for most designs.

 

You can see firewire going the way of most technology, because it's being replaced by higher standards. USB 3.0 is on its way, as well as the already mentioned E-SATA. And, as already stated, I believe 4-pin is mostly standard because of the high power-draw for high-speed firewire transfers. I don't think that many people are running firewire out in the field on battery power only, so an external power-source is not a major issue.

 

Apple have always had an obsession for making thin notebooks, yet they've managed to include these ports on most of their notebooks until now. A 6-pin port could easily fit on a Dell XPS or Lenovo Thinkpad.

For external disks maybe, but not necessarily for digital audio and video equipment . There are no eSATA audio interfaces as far as I know. FireWire was partly designed with digital audio and video equipment in mind.

FireWire S1600 and S3200 are on their way too