M
MacHeadCase
Guest
Ok as some of you might know this already, a friend of mine is making the switch from Windoze to Mac. She is mostly likely going to pick up a 17" iMac with SuperDrive this coming weekend. (This household is jumpin' for joy! Whooh!)
She wanted to know if she could upgrade her FW400 port to FW800 later on and I told her that no, iMacs are all-in-one and that, apart from the RAM and maybe, if you're fearless, the hard drive, there isn't much you can upgrade in it.
We started talking about why FW800 would be important and, me thinks that, other than professionals doing plenty of video editing, the FW800's higher bandwidth isn't required for what she wants to do: she's a part-time musician and wants to use her iMac for putting together music, she also wants to use her iMac for streaming music via AirPort. I told her it would be best for her to get a 500GB external hard drive to store backups and all her music on it, instead of getting a big internal BTO 500GB in the iMac. To me, it looks safer to rely on two HDs instead of only one that holds all her stuff. If ever her HD fails, all her stuff is gone.
So I just wanted to bounce this off of you knowledgeable folks. Am I wrong about this? Is FW800 better for her external HD than FW400? Or will FW400 stream the audio just fine? What are the practical uses for FW800 apart from professionals in the video business?
Thanks for your input!
She wanted to know if she could upgrade her FW400 port to FW800 later on and I told her that no, iMacs are all-in-one and that, apart from the RAM and maybe, if you're fearless, the hard drive, there isn't much you can upgrade in it.
We started talking about why FW800 would be important and, me thinks that, other than professionals doing plenty of video editing, the FW800's higher bandwidth isn't required for what she wants to do: she's a part-time musician and wants to use her iMac for putting together music, she also wants to use her iMac for streaming music via AirPort. I told her it would be best for her to get a 500GB external hard drive to store backups and all her music on it, instead of getting a big internal BTO 500GB in the iMac. To me, it looks safer to rely on two HDs instead of only one that holds all her stuff. If ever her HD fails, all her stuff is gone.
So I just wanted to bounce this off of you knowledgeable folks. Am I wrong about this? Is FW800 better for her external HD than FW400? Or will FW400 stream the audio just fine? What are the practical uses for FW800 apart from professionals in the video business?
Thanks for your input!