Can someone here give me a simple explanation on firewire?

[erinlough]

Specific questions I have are:

1. why would I use one?
2. What specific devices would I use one on? Time machine?
3. do I use it instead of a usb port?
4. How do I set up the computer to use it?
This is probably obvious but I have researched and two paragraphs into the explanation I get lost and the reason is vocabulary. I'm not a dolt where computers are concerned but I'm not an IT tec either.


By the way I love my new imac.

[WritersBlock]

1. Well,

I'm not an expert, but from what I understand, firewire is a way of transferring data, similar to, but lots faster than, USB.

You can use firewire to attach a video camera to your computer so you can transfer movies to the computer for editing, and you can get firewire webcams, which are supposed to be better for video conferencing than USB webcams (or so I'm told).

You can also get external hard drives that are firewire rather than USB. The advantage over USB is speed.

To use it, I'm pretty sure you just plug the firewire cable (that probably comes with whatever peripheral you're going to be using) into the firewire port on your computer. (At least that's what I do with my video camera. I'm not fortunate enough to have a firewire drive. Yet.)

I have read that iMacs have two firewire ports; 1394a (FireWire 400) and 1394b (FireWire 800). The 800 transfer rate is twice as fast as the 400. I would assume the 800 is backward compatible with a 400 device, but I'm sure the experts on here can clarify.

Hope this helps :)

[erinlough]

2. It does help, thank you. n/t

[onehandle]

3. An 800 port only works with an 800 cable and another device with an 800 port.

Same goes for the 400 connection. If an external drive has an 800 port is will almost always have a 400 port too.

Digital video cameras equipped with firewire are usually 400 capable only.

[moggie]

4. It depends on the Mac

My iMac has both FW400 and FW800 ports, and I use an external FW800 disk. My MacBook has only a FW400 port. USB 2.0 is potentially faster than FW400, though whether it works out that way in practice depends on the devices. FW800 is substantially faster than USB 2.0.

[MagickMuffin]

5. Besides the transfer issues, Firewire is also how you connect video cameras

Glad you're loving your iMac. I have a Swivel 17" iMac, but we're only using it as a jukebox. We had to install a new hard drive in it, which we did ourselves.

I got a 17" G4 for Xmas, an upgrade from my 15" G4.

We used the Firewire to transfer all my 15" to my 17" and it only took about 2.5 hours to transfer everything.

[erinlough]

6. I was determined that my next computer would be a mac

I wanted the operating system back. Funny story, after being on a PC for about 10 years I looked all over the imac last night for how to remove a program.........finally realized you just drag and drop it in the trash. It's so nice to get simple again!!!!