Make sure you look at Presonus and Focusrite gear as well. They've both got good options at decent prices. And I would venture to say that if you are only going to be moving a few tracks around, USB 2.0 would be ok. If you are recording more than one track at a time, and eventually running multiple tracks I would just go for the extra bandwidth and go firewire. With things like that, you never notice it until you need it most.