OT: new macbooks, no firewire

[Sarah Reichelt]

> Having a few moments to spare I took a look at Apple's new MacBooks. Mixed
> feelings. I think I'll need to see and touch to make a valid judgement. I
> too have eye problems, so the contrast may be good for me, but I'm a
> desktopper anyway, and probably won't be buying anything new for quite a
> while. Certainly the firewire thing is a major turnoff. I somewhat recently
> purchased two 500 GB firewires and can't imagine using USB for any major
> transfers. Time Machine with USB.  Ha! Ha!

I use TimeMachine with USB 2 external drives and it works fine. The
first backup takes a couple of hours as all the data & apps are copied
over, but after that, you don't even notice it happening.

I would panic if FireWire disappeared from the desktop models as
that's what I use for transferring data from my HD video camera, but
there is no way I would do video editing on a laptop, so that's not an
issue. Here in Australia, FireWire external drives haven't been
available for years. At first you could get hybrid USB/FW drives, but
now they are all USB2.

Just my 2 cents,
Sarah