macbook pro + FW800

so intel doesnt "do" FW800 and im screwed.

I have 3 external HDs that are fw800 and do not know what i am going to do with them come february when i get my MBP. Seeing as the card slot is PCI-E ide imagine it can handle a FW800 card...is that my only option? my best option? also if i have to now choose between FW400 or USB2.0 which should i choose.

It all depends on what you use your drives for. I remember reading for burst speeds, usb 2.0 was faster, but for large file data transfer, firewire was the best option.

Also remember, if you use your firewire drives as backup drives, you cannot target mount a usb2.0 drive, only the firewire. For my usage, it is important to be able to mount them, backup my drives, etc etc.

If you only use it for file transfer, no backup purposes that would require you to use target disk mode, I would go for usb 2.0. Cheaper, readily compliant with windows computers (if that would ever matter to you), and backward compatible with older hardware.

my 2c

Get a FW800 adapter for the ExpressCard/34 slot.

Apple said that there will be a FW800 to FW400 adapter hardly a good solution but atleast you can still use your drives rather than crappy USB2

will i loose any performance wiht a PC slot adpapter for the FW 4/800

No the ExpressCard/34 is designed to be a portable PCI-E adapter... it's way faster than FW800... 250 Megabytes compared to FW800-800 Megabits. 1 byte = 8 bits...

Enter ExpressCard, a smaller, faster, cheaper solution. ExpressCard will have the theoretical maximum throughput to transfer data at a whopping 250 MBps (actually, 500 MBps total; 250 MBps to the computer in one direction and 250 MBps to the card in the other). This is in comparison to the now seemingly sluggish 132-MBps PC Card standard.

ExpressCard's throughput is ideal for video transfers and uncompressed files. To compare it with throughputs you're familiar with: Gigabit Ethernet has a throughput of 125 MBps, FireWire 800 (seen only in new Apple notebooks so far) runs at 100 MBps, and USB 2.0 can reach 60 MBps.

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