GeekSpeak for August 12, 2006
The Light Pick
Santa Cruz inventor Michael Herring joins the Geeks for a discussion about Light Picks, a guitar pick with a built in metronome.
Learn about the process of invention, the starting of a business, and the sales and makreting behind it.
[ Audio 24.4 MB mp3 ]Geek News
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The IBM PC turns 25
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James Van Allen, accomplished atro-physicist, is dead at the age of 91
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Millions of minors illegally buying alcohol through the internet
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Battlefield 2142 beta coming to FilePlanet subscribers
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Hard drive price war coming
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First Blu-ray disc drive won't play Blu-ray movies
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With exploits out, Microsoft braces for worm attack
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Nation of Cameroon typo-squats the entire .com top-level domain
Your Calls
What computer should I buy for voice recognition and video editing?
Check out CompRec for recommendations.
Is the Light Pick like the Light Snake?
No, but it's a cool product for musicians doing digital recording.
DVD-R or DVD+R?
DVD+R is better for data and archival, but DVD-R is much more compatible with the DVD player you would hook up to a TV.
Get a laptop now with Vista on the horizon?
Go ahead and get one now, but make sure you are buying a laptop with a discrete graphics chipset, not an integrated graphics chipset.
More on FireWire vs USB 2.0
Ed from King City wrote:
I just tested a dual USB2 / Firewire drive on a MacBook. Using transfering a 6GB file using firewire averaged 29.5GB per second. Using the USB2 interface averaged 18.07GB/second. I've tried this before on my dual core G5 and got the same results. You just said there was no difference. What gives?
Lyle responds:
Ahh, interesting, I hadn't seen testing numbers and was basing my answers on specs. "USB 2.0 Hi-Speed mode is 480 megabits per second, while the signalling rate of FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394a) is 393.216 Mbit/s" - source
So, by spec, USB2 seems potentially faster. But I would not be surprised to see FireWire performing faster depending on the implementation. I know, for example, that Apple has spend a lot of resources on FireWire.
Here are two more plusses for USB 2.0:
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Compatible with most computers, because it is backwards compatible with USB 1 and Windows machines typically do not come with FireWire.
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When importing video through FireWire, using a MiniDV camera, it is best to no also have a hard drive connected to the FireWire chain.
But a speed difference that you have seen is a significant difference. Perhaps it is the implementation of the drive that you have. I will have to give it a try with my Seagate USB2/FireWire.
On Aug 12, 2006, at 10:57 AM, Ed from King City wrote
