Sony Vaio. Used 'em for years, built solid, good chipset and deployment of features. Comes with both FW & USB 2.0. A no-brainer.

Joe, I think there are some problems with some laptops when trying to use a FireWire device that requires bus powering? Many of the laptops do not offer bus powering from the FireWire interface, such as my Hewlett-Packard DV 8000. It features a 4 pin FireWire port, that does not support bus power and if one should require bus powering, a FireWire PCMCIA card that allows for an external power supply for bus powering may be purchased for under $50 at your local computer stores. I also purchased one of those for just that particular reason to use with my Hewlett-Packard laptop.

So, t2roc you need to know if your external FireWire audio interface can be powered from an external power supply?

Externally yours
Ms. Remy Ann David

thanks, it has a plug, so theres no issue with power.
M

FWIW, I would never expect to use any power fucntions with a laptop on the firewire cable, whether it's 4 pin or 6. Just not good practice. I always plug in the FW & USB Devices in to its AC/DC wall wart unit, and run it that way. Anything else is asking for trouble, IMHO.

And by the way, I've never been able to get my laptop to power ANY Peripheral anyway....either I'm doing something wrong, or my laptop has been protecting itself from my own incompetance. :roll:

JoeH I've not had any problems bus powering my Roland/Edirol UA-1X USB line level audio device or my M-AUDIO TRANSIT line level device along with USB LED lights and fans and 2.5 inch external bus powered hard drives on my Hewlett-Packard DV 8000? But they dropped the ball on that 4 pin FireWire connector without offering bus powering on that. How consistent! WTF?

I can't believe that you could be capable of operator error?? I thought you're perfect? Maybe I'm doing something horribly right?? Nahhh?

Horribly confident
Ms. Remy Ann David