Hi,

I use the Fireface 800 with a Toshiba Tecra M5 and its built-in firewire port, and it works like a charm. I did a good amount of research before I chose this laptop. Some of the things I like are: 1) it uses a Texas Instruments firewire 400 chip, so no need for a separate firewire card (unless you need FW800); 2) Core 2 Duo processor; 3) a swappable bay that can take a CD/DVD drive or a second hard drive (sold separately) - this is great to have two drives with no external drive; 4) a very solid, magnesium allow case; 5) runs quiet and cool; 6) has a PC type II card slot instead of the newer, but less useful, express card slot; 7) you can get a docking station that has both DVI and VGA video out for dual monitors; 8) it has an SPDIF port; 9) it is reasonably priced for what it offers.

What I don't like is that Toshiba loads their laptops with a tons of bloatware, and they only give you a restore CD so you can't load a clean copy of Windows unless you have a separate Windows CD. Battery life is only ok, but I always plug mine in. Also, a slightly odd thing is that the built-in drive is SATA, but the swappable drive bay is PATA. Not a big deal, but something to keep in mind. The screen is pretty good, but not the best. I'd also prefer if it were widescreen. But, I only use the screen on location when it is not docked to my better monitors. Graphics card is not great for gaming, but I don't do that anyway.

Hope this helps.