When USB was first unleashed upon the public it was cheered for its hot-swappable device support and scalded for its (even then), lack luster performance. USB 1.1, with a throughput of 12Mbps, may work great for mice keyboards and other low-bandwidth items, but it just doesn’t have the brawn to support the high-performance digital video and storage devices of tomorrow. IEEE 1394 (Firewire to Apple and iLink to Sony) trounced the first versions of USB and took the early lead for high-end, high-bandwidth usage with its almost universal adoption in DV editing applications. But for reasons that range from the practical to paranoid, the fact is that IEEE 1394 never made it to the mainboard in mainstream PC’s, and that kept it in its DV niche.