going from one fw800 and one fw400 to just one fw800 is a HUGE mistake. Losing one port for let's be honest, just aesthetics, is insane. All I can hope for is the 17" when it comes out early next year won't make the same mistake!

Is it a mistake, or a more efficient and effective design? Considering Firewire has amazing daisy-chain capability two ports are IMO quite unnecessary.. I regularly keep 2x1TB & 1x500GB drive attached to my 17" MBP.

My FW400 port is nothing more than a dust collector.

Addendum:
Ars Technica has a good article on this subject.

For those not wanting to read the article, but interested in Steve Jobs one line remark about FireWire 400: "Actually, all of the new HD camcorders of the past few years use USB 2."

They are right, the MacBook is a computer for the general consumer, not aimed for the professional market. AND if you still want a MB with firewire, they are still selling the old flavor, in white, for $100 less than the stylish new 'brick' model.

I agree, a single FW800 is not much of a loss in performance terms. I spent a few hours testing this with Apple guys at the Olympics. We daisy chained FW800 drive with a Lexar FW card reader. The compared it to the same drive on the FW800 port and the reader on the FW400 port. It turned out daisy chained one worked faster.

Also confused at the loss.
 

Since I use a Sonnet F2 (eSATA but powered by FW400) and have daisy chained Lexar CF drives to my FW800 port, I can't see this as a good move. Totally daft.

Jus.

With all that, it would look as though you would be a MacBook Pro user not the smaller Mac Book.

Yup. Vintage 06/07
 

I've been working off one for a couple of years now. I was hoping for a big power boost from the new range but it seems largely cosmetic at the moment. Perhaps with Snow Leopard and a possible 8GB memory option and the hope of using both the inbuilt nvidia gfx card along with the installed gfx card for extra display power. The changing socket configurations are a pain in the backside (as I imagine they are for thrid party vendors like Sonnet, Matrox, AJA, Blackmagic, Convergent and others) but not insurmountable. Personally, I'd happily lose all the firewire for an extra expresscard socket to take advantage of the much faster bus speeds and connection options.

Jus.

The new Sony Fix:
 

The new Sony fix can be found @:

SXS Drivers
Bj

This is very good news.

So Andy S., we must be neighbors....

Hi Bob, Yes... the view from my deck looks between Nanaimo and Victoria although it takes 2 ferries to get to your rock. When the weather warms up and I get my motorbike out again I'll look you up :)

Back on topic... I hope the original poster realizes that the SXS drivers until a day or so ago were incompatible with his Macbook Pro that he just bought. It has been documented on other forums. Hopefully Sony got it right!