Hi

I have just setup my new Dell Dimension 9200 (after having it in storage for 18 months) It has PCI Express card slots as well as IDE. I didn't order Firewire ports as I have a spare IDE card. However I didn't realise at the time when I ordered it from Dell that the PCI Express slots offer faster data transfer. I have a Canon XM2 and Pansonic DS38 Videocams and Adobe Premiere Elements 3. The Dell has a 256MB Nvidia Geforce 7900GS Graphics card with two DVI outputs and one SVHS output. The card occupies the 16x slot

I don't anticipate upgrading to HDV. Should I buy a PCI Express card with firewire 400 (1394a) ports or pay a lot more for a PCI Express Firewire card 800 (1394b) card. or just use my existing IDE card?

Or should I buy a video editing card with firewire ports?

I don't quite understand about the IDE card - this would be a disk drive interface. Do you mean a PCI FireWire card?

If you already have a FireWire interface and it is occupying an older style slot, you should keep it there. FireWire for DV and HDV isn't demanding. Leave the new slot technology for cards where you really need the speed.

yeah I'm not time to hijack this thread, but I popped into my head as I was looking. I want to buy a laptop computer. is there a card that would give the computer FireWire input on one of the models that does not have it.

Alan,

You only have PCI expansion slots on that computer. IDE is for hard drives, DVD drives, etc.



Kris,

You can add a firewire card if the laptop has a PC Card slot or a ExpressCard slot.



Cheers,

Duane