GG, I didn't mean that Firewire was dead-in-the-water, just the future development of the technology as a data transfer standard. 400 Mb/s Firewire is relatively common but 800 Mb/s Fireware is much less so (the ports are only found on G5 towers and upper-end powerbooks (15/17"). I use the FW800 port for back-up and for powering the back-up drive - its great. However, the development track called for FW1600 and FW3200 specs. These will not see the light of day as SATA is the new standard for high-speed transfer. This is a shame because 1394 is an excellent technology for portable devices (and is extensible to TCP/IP over FireWire, etc). USB should be known as Underpowered, Second Best. It's inferior in all ways but price to 1394. The irony is that if 1394 was more popular, it would cost no more than USB2. Meanwhile, if you buy a port-powered device and have either FW400 or FW800 available, use those ports rather than USB2.
jicon, its not a question of how much power a six port 1394 port requires, but how much it can deliver (answer is up to 45 Watts as a tech spec, with up to 15 Watts in practice compared to a paltry 2.5 Watts for USB2).
WiebeTech offer excellent FireWire interface devices and they published a great
White Paper detailing the development of 1394 (and its un-achieved potential) as well as a short one on
Bus Power. Both good reads.
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