Yay or nay: Firewire

This is a bit of a geeky one to start a new weekly series: Yay or Nay in which we pick a tech product or issue and ask you to vote and comment on whether it’s hot or not.

Still, I’m sure there are some of you who care how your devices connect together, so here we go…

Firewire: Yay or Nay?

Here’s some points to consider:

1. Firewire (IEEE 1394) was developed by Apple Computer in the early 1990s as a high-speed replacement for SCSI.
2. Sony implemented their own version (surprise surprise) called i-Link.
3. Firewire is often used to connect high-speed devices like video cameras and hard drives to PCs.
4. Firewire is generally faster than USB (even FW400 compared to USB2) due to its peer-to-peer architecture.
5. Apple dropped Firewire support on some of its more recent products including iPods and new notebook computers.
6. Microsoft has announced that it will support 1394b in its next-generation Vista operating system.
7. Digital TVs, cable set top boxes, and DVD recorders are all driving 1394a growth in the consumer electronics market, according to recent research, and may spur 1394 as a home networking solution.

So… Firewire: Yay or nay?

Do you use FW and love it? Should it just lay down and die quietly in favour of USB? Or is it due a new lease of life.