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Kanguru Releases First FireWire Flash Drive

Posted by timothy on from the and-firewire-is-like-a-hot-wire dept.

hajmola points out this Mac Observer article, which starts "At long last, after years of USB having a corner on the flash drive market, Kanguru has announced its Fire Flash FireWire flash drive line. With capacities ranging from 128MB to 1GB, the Fire Flash is the perfect way to carry your data with you, and since they uses FireWire, you won't be waiting around for the transfer to finish.""

3 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. The Catch by MBCook · · Score: 3, Insightful
    That's nice and all (I prefer FireWire over USB myself), but it would be useless to me. The problem is powering the thing. Sure, 6 pin firewire ports are powered. But what about me? My computer has a 4 pin port (which I'm not happy about). So how do I use it? There is no power from the port. There is no plug on the device for a way to plug it into a USB or PS/2 port to get power. The only way I can think of is a firewire Y cable sort of thing I have. You plug the device needing power in one end, the computer in another, and then you plug the third end into a wallwart (not unlike the iPod's one). So much for portable.

    So as nice as this is, it's not for everyone. USB really is superior for this task because of this (IMHO). I have never seen or heard of an unpowered USB port. And if such a thing exists, I don't think it is up to spec because (unlike FW) I think that all USB ports are require to be able to power something (not pass-though ports though).

    Still, neat to see. Now if we could just lose the 4 pin FW ports. The connectors are bad enough on their own. Redesign it, and and power to it.

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    1. Re:The Catch by Bastian · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Hey, don't blame them for 4-pin FW ports. Me, I blame all the cheap-ass PC users who push manufacturers to cut costs by any means necessary, including emasculating an otherwise far superior bus technology.

      The amount power you can send over a 6-pin FireWire bus is one of its greatest assets. I've had four external FireWire hard drives daisy-chained off of one FW port without having to resort to an external power source. Granted, God Save You if you try to transfer data from two of those drives at once, but with USB I've never even seen one drive work without an external power source.

      I imagine the next great innovations we'll get from Dell and company will include mice that speak to the computer using BlueTooth but get their power from 110V A/C, optical drives where you spin the media with a hand crank, and MP3 players that have no internal storage but can grab music from SMB shares using the convenient ethernet port.

  2. Re:USB 2.0 is faster by 2nd+Post! · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No, though as another helpful poster has linked, USB 2.0 is specced higher than Firewire.

    Is a Volvo S60 faster than a Ford Expedition? Well, it depends on usage right? Freeway? Off road? In a river?

    But in usage tests, Firewire is faster. Feel free to buy USB2, of course, but you're only cheating yourself in most situations!

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