Firewire or Gigabit Ethernet?

schvenk asks: "Firewire (IEEE 1394) has been accepted as a standard for peripherals, from hard drives to CD-RW drives to digital video cameras. It's a 400 Mbps technology. At the same time, many machines are shipping with Gigabit Ethernet, a 1000 Mbps equivalent of an more widely accepted standard. I'm not a hardware guy, but at first glance it would seem more efficient to eliminate Firewire altogether and equip peripherals with Ethernet ports, ultimately moving all wired communication to a unified standard. Am I missing something?"