External Hard Drive

FireWire is another type of port, like USB. Mac computers have FireWire. PCs have USB. If you're lucky, your PC will have both USB and FireWire ports. The FireWire port on a laptop looks similar to an inverted crown. I believe the Inspiron 8100 does have a FireWire port on the right side of the laptop??? On my Inspiron 300m, it's on the left side of the chassis.

Digital camcorders use FireWire for video transfer. External hard drive enclosures use both types of ports (USB and FireWire). Which is better? USB 2.0 is rated at 480 MBits while FireWire is rated at 400 MBits.

On the surface, USB 2.0 is obviously faster. In practice, FireWire works faster. There is also a newer FireWire standard called FireWire 800, which is double the speed of regular FireWire (or FireWire 400).

You will only find FireWire 800 capability on the top of the line motherboards. Having this capability is pointless right now because not many devices are available which can take advantage of this higher speed.

Tim

You're 8100 does have an inbuilt FireWire port.

If you intend to get an external hard drive then you either get one with a FireWire interface i.e. the hard drive connects to your laptop's FireWire port or you get one with and USB interface. If you intend to get the latter then I would strongly suggest you get an USB2 PCMCIA card as data transfer using your present USB ports (they are USB 1.1) will be extremely slow.

the fire wire port on your 8100 is on the right side of the machine, next to the microphone jack.