[analogika]

The *only* thing I was saying was that the computer labs full of machines dead Firewire ports, used as an example for the consequences of the allegedly faulty plug design, are most likely caused by the power surge problem, NOT by people sticking plugs in the wrong way 'round. That's all.

Truce.

[Koralatov]

Originally Posted by bballe336 

I won't be using USB, it cuts into CPU usage.

My iMac G4 performs flawlessly when I have multiple applications open (iPhoto, Safari with a bunch of tabs open, iTunes, VLC, a few others), and there is no apparent performance hit. The only thing that nails my iMac and slows it significantly? Transferring large-ish files via USB 2.0. It's a real pain in the ass, especially considering it takes a while because of the piss-poor sustained data rates. This is only going to get worse with USB 3.0. Thankfully, my iMac will never have to deal with it.

[ginoledesma]

The problem with USB isn't so much as USB itself, but Apple's implementation of it. The file transfer performance of USB 2.0 on Windows 2000/XP (haven't tried Vista) blows away Mac OS X's. One can only hope that with Apple and Intel working together closely this will get better.

[Koralatov]

Originally Posted by ginoledesma 

The problem with USB isn't so much as USB itself, but Apple's implementation of it. The file transfer performance of USB 2.0 on Windows 2000/XP (haven't tried Vista) blows away Mac OS X's. One can only hope that with Apple and Intel working together closely this will get better.

There's some truth in that--large file transfers on my XP machine don't bring it to its knees like they do in OSX. That said, though, USB's sustained transfer rates leave a lot to be desired, regardless of platform--it gives a spurt at its 'full' speed of 480Mb/s then throttles way back after that.

Still, I mainly use it for watching video from one of my external drives, so it's not that big a problem, but it does grate once in a while.

[indigoimac]

Originally Posted by ginoledesma 

The problem with USB isn't so much as USB itself, but Apple's implementation of it. The file transfer performance of USB 2.0 on Windows 2000/XP (haven't tried Vista) blows away Mac OS X's. One can only hope that with Apple and Intel working together closely this will get better.

This is very true... as I transfer 30gigs from my FW800 drive to a USB2 one. It's agonizing, lol. The OSX implementation is pretty crappy and considering USB2's marketshare I would expect that 10.5 will be a decent improvement.