Unfortunately, the “plug and play” option didn’t work for add-ons that require a high data-transfer rate, like hard drives and video cameras. Finally, in 1999, Windows-based machines added support for a pair of new peripheral interfaces (those connectors on the front or back of your PC) that were faster and smarter than their predecessors. One was the Intel-developed Universal Serial Bus, more commonly known as USB. The other was IEEE-1394, engineered by Apple. Things get confusing here. Apple gave IEEE the trademark name FireWire. But when Sony licensed the technology as part of its strategy to mate PCs to consumer gear like digital video cameras, it decided to use the name iLINK. (“We didn’t feel the word “fire” was appropriate for a consumer electronics device,” explains Sonyspokesperson Mack Araki.) Several other companies, loath to use names that have been trademarked by Apple or Sony, have opted to refer to it as 1394. So when you go to the store and hear all these names being thrown about, remember they’re all the same thing.
The high-speed USB and FireWire standards made it possible to plug in increasingly popular peripherals like CD burners, MP3 players and digital video cameras. USB can handle a zippy 12 megabits per second, and FireWire blazes along at a staggering top speed of 400Mb per second. (To put it in perspective, that’s more than 7,100 times faster than your 56K modem.) Thanks to the support of giants like Microsoft, Apple and Sony, USB and 1394 are rapidly becoming ubiquitous. If you bought a PC from Christmas 1998 onward, the odds are you have one or more USB ports; also, soon-to-be-merged Hewlett-Packard and Compaq have decided to put FireWire on all their Pentium 4 PCs shipping later this month. Even Sony’s superpowered PlayStation 2 game console has USB and FireWire ports, so that in the future you’ll be able to taunt your friends over the Internet using a USB microphone, or add special effects to your home videos when you connect your FireWire-equipped camcorder.
Today, it’s pretty easy to decide when to use USB. It’s slower, but great for relatively low-bandwidth PC peripherals: mice, trackballs, digital still cameras, handheld computers and MP3 players. FireWire, on the other hand, not only works well for high-bandwidth accessories like high-resolution scanners and laser printers, but is also quickly becoming the connection standard for digital home entertainment, replacing all those unsightly cables that clutter up the space behind your home entertainment center. That’s because USB is a “hub” technology, requiring a smart device like a PC to serve as a traffic cop between your various peripherals, while FireWire’s “peer to peer” approach lets your peripherals talk directly to one an-other. And since no one wants a PC in the living room, it’s the perfect place for FireWire to find a home. “The promiseof 1394 is the potential to connect all of your entertainment devices with a single wire,” says David Fair, a manager at Intel, noting that it’s already widely deployedin Japan.
Right now, the killer app for FireWire is digital video editing, since each hour of video footage translates into 10 to 15 gigabytes of data. Apple and Sony’s PCs all ship with user-friendly video-editing software, and Microsoft is improving its basic editing features in the upcoming Windows XP. “People want to take an hour of home video and condense it to five minutes for Grandma,” says Fair. “Not that she wouldn’t watch the whole hour, but she’ll show a five-minute clip to all her friends.” For the PC industry, what’s exciting is that camcorders, VCRs and other entertainment devices can now talk to PCs, thanks to FireWire.
So far, USB and FireWire complement each other by meeting very different needs. But with the upcoming USB 2.0 version promising speeds of 480Mb per second–making it 20 percent faster than FireWire–the two technologies appear to be on a collision course. (FireWire isn’t standing still; the next version is slated to hit 800Mb per second.) Because USB 2.0 has been slow to develop, Microsoft is not supporting it in Windows XP, which means that USB 2.0 devices won’t be plug-and-play; you’ll have to install some software first. Greg Sullivan, the lead product manager for Windows XP, says that Microsoft will find some way to support it shortly after XP ships, and refuses to get caught up in a battle over which technology will win out. “There could be confusion [for users], but people mostly think about the device first, then the method of connection. If my digital video camera has FireWire, that’s what I use. If I have a digital still camera with USB, I use that. And the great thing is that we support both.” Now that you know the differences between USB and 1394, you’ll probably find yourself supporting both, too.
